Share the Wealth Sunday 31 July: Celebrating Mary Oliver
Last night in Our Good News class, Dianne Lee read Wild Geese to us. This led me to think it would be worthwhile to invite fans of Mary Oliver to do likewise this Sunday night:…
Category: Poets
A Woman Who Is Part of the Proletariat of Billions of Artists
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…
Denying Adorno
I have no idea that at the same time in the United States of America, Theodore Adorno has come out with the sweeping statement that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. A meaningful, powerful…
Exploring di Prima
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…
The Dear Love of Comrades: Reading and Writing with Walt Whitman–A Summer Class
As I was reciting some Whitman poems this morning and noticing my mood improving, I realized: I want to invite friends to read Whitman this summer. There was never any more inception than there is now,Nor…
Sangha of Poets
Dear Friends, As we are reading Nhat Hanh’s poems for our June session, I thought I’d share a few poems by other Zen poets in the weeks ahead. Here is one by Han-Shan, who lived…
Our Cup Runneth Over
Sunday night 8 May 2022 Dear Mona, I thought I was done sending you poetry after that April Poetry Month binge. But I can’t resist! The following is from Robert Di Yanni’s book, You Are…
Su Tung P’o, Traveling at Night and Looking at the Stars (NPM, 4.25.22)
Heaven high above, the night air chill,ranged stars crowd the sky, all in proper places,big stars darting rays back and forth little stars busy as boiling water.Heaven and humans don’t meddle with one another —what does…
“Up to Me” (National Poetry Month, 4.22.22)
Dear Vanessa, It took me a few weeks to work in the 2016 Nobel Laureate of Literature in these NPM missives to you. Is he a poet? He’d say “song-writer.” This is one of my…
Anne, Allen, You, Me
National Poetry Month This Day of April 21, 2022Today’s poem: Anne Waldman, Notes on Sitting Beside a Noble Corpse Where would I be without Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg? In my own Shimmelstoy way, I…