Poetry Monday: September 4, 2023

Good morning, everyone:  Soon you’ll be sending children or grandchildren off to school, and some of you will be off to school yourselves, as teachers or students  — and in some cases, as it was for me, both.

Those of us who love poetry are always ready to read and learn more about it.  I know that’s why, among all the collections on my shelves are books about fundamentals.  This morning I’d like to tell you about some of those I have recently found most valuable.

First is a recent little book that I will never part with: Musical Tables by former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins (Random House, 2022).  As critic Alice Fulton has said, he “puts the fun back in profundity.” This book of short, witty poems will bear — in fact, invite — repeated re-readings.  His own love of poetry, he tells us, might have begun with nursery rhymes; I know that mine did.

Which is why, whether you have young children at home or not, I invite you to go back to the enduring classics of your childhood: Mother Goose,  A Child’s Garden of Verses, those fairy tales with crayon-colored names, e.g., The Yellow Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book — and a copy of Bible Stories for Children — if you can find them.  There is also a wonderful, small pocket-sized copy of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library, 2004), with an introduction by Collins himself.  It’s in my handbag now, and I’ve read and re-read it in many a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting-room.  I’m now rushing to put it away, for I never want to be without it — nor, I hope, will you. Continue reading Poetry Monday: September 4, 2023

POETRY MONDAY: October 3, 2022

                     Hilary Russell

Good morning, everyone.  Fall is upon us, it seems.  Apples are ripe and abundant, and so does nature nourish and sustain us.

Our poet today, Hilary Russell, has had an interesting life.  Having grown up outside of New York City, he now lives in the Berkshires, in Western Massachusetts.  He holds a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University and a master’s from Wesleyan University.  But what is interesting is what he now does for a living.  After teaching high school English for many years, he took up small boat building and, through his company, Berkshire Boat Building School, he teaches classes in boat-building.  While many, if not most poets have college and graduate school degrees, few, if any, build boats.

His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, The George Washington Review, and other well-known journals.  He is the author of Giving up the House, a chapbook (Mad River Press); The Anthology of American Poetry (Wayside Press), and The Portable Writer (Wayside Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: October 3, 2022

Jews in North America

1.  The first Jews to set foot in North America arrived in New York as a group of 23 in 1654.

2.  Congregation Shearith Israel, founded in New York in 1654, was the first synagogue in the colonies. It was the sole purveyor of kosher eat until 1813.

3.  By the late 19th century, there were over 5,000 kosher butchers and 1,000 slaughterers in New York.

4.  In 1902, the Beef Trust raised the price of kosher meat on the Lower East Side from 12 to 18 cents per pound. After butchers’ boycotts proved ineffectual, 20,000 Lower East Side women stole meat from kosher butcher shops and set it on fire on the streets
in protest. The Forward supported their efforts, running the headline “Bravo, Bravo, Bravo, Jewish women!” Continue reading Jews in North America

POETRY MONDAY: SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

                                                                                                                     LEE JENKINS

Good morning, everyone.  Were these normal times, I would be saying, “Happy Labor Day,” but with so many out of work and many even hungry, it seems cruel to think of the picnics and barbecues of past years.  Even last year seems like a lifetime away.

At any rate, poetry survives and helps us to – perhaps now more than ever, that so many are locked down.   Many poets are writing Covid poems, and some of you may be among them.

Most, but not all of our readers are psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, and many are also professors.  I trust that we also have readers from a variety of fields, who labor in their own way and who use poetry as its own kind of medicine.

Our poet today, Lee Jenkins, whose work I encountered just recently, is a retired Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY (City University of New York) and also a psychoanalyst in private practice on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  He sees people from all ethnic groups and all five boroughs, as well as neighboring states, and while his practice continues to thrive since his retirement from teaching, so does his writing life.

A bit more background first.  Jenkins grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and received a B.A. in philosophy from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.  Later he attended the University of Iowa to study playwriting in the theater arts department. His teaching began with a year at Talladega College, a small black liberal arts college in Alabama.  From there he went to New York City, where he earned a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.  He then undertook psychoanalytic training at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) and has since served as a faculty member, supervisor and training analyst at Blanton-Peale Institute, the Harlem Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: SEPTEMBER 7, 2020