For Elizabeth Jane Burkemper This week I took a couple of days to read David Stephen Calonne’s new collection, Conversations with Dianne di Prima. In fall 2018, several friends and I explored di Prima in…
This website is indebted in a variety of ways to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. For example, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from their one-liners such as “Be in love with yr life” (JK)…
I’ve known Danielle since 2006 when she took a SLU Social Justice class with me after she’d studied abroad in El Salvador, which, it is safe to say, transformed her life. Since then, we’ve spent…
Dear Poet. I finally got my Walt class together… maybe you could join us as a guest speaker at some point, tell us what you thought of him. But if you are indeed interested/curious about…
1. I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.–Walt Whitman 2. In 1968 Susan Sontag visited Hanoi for two weeks. In her account of her experiences, she seemed a bit surprised the…
Remembering Rosemary Radford Ruether, with whom I was in Palestine in spring 1990 and who supported my first book in 2001… She was one of the greats. She embodied sempre avanti. She had a deep…
Much Madness is divinest Sense –To a discerning Eye –Much Sense – the starkest Madness –‘Tis the MajorityIn This, as All, prevail – Assent – and you are sane –Demur – you’re straightaway dangerous – And handled…
As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967. I do not personally know of anyone…
Last night I asked Dianne Lee if she’d heard about the Whoopi Goldberg controversy earlier this week when she said the Holocaust had nothing to do with racism, but rather “man’s inhumanity to man.” …
Recently, the Persian scholar and poetry translator Matt Miller sent me condolences upon the death of one of my teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh. I mentioned to him that the several of the teachers I first…