Category: Poetry Monday

Poetry Monday: June 6, 2022
By Categories: Literature, Poetry Monday

Jamey Hecht

Good morning, everyone!  This is beginning to sound like same-old, same-0ld, but that’s because it is.
Depending on where we live and percentages of viruses, vaccinations, masking and hand-washing, we’ve all seen recommendations go up and down and, being the intelligent rule-followers that we are, we’ve done our best to obey.
But it’s exhausting – and even expensive, as our prices also go up and down.  It’s at times like these that we most need the soul-healing experience of poetry.
With this in mind, I’m happy to introduce you to a wonderful poet named Jamey Hecht.
He’s new to me and probably not new to many of you, because he’s been writing for a very long time. Jamey is the author of five books to date: Plato’s Symposium: Eros and the Human Predicament (Twayne, 1999); Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, a translation with commentary, (Wordsworth Editions, 2005); Bloom’s How to Write about Homer  (Chelsea, 2010); and two books of poetry. Limousine, Midnight Blue (Red Hen Press, 2009) is fifty elegies for President Kennedy.  Dodo Feathers: Poems 1989 – 2019 is a collection published by IPBooks. Continue reading Poetry Monday: June 6, 2022

Poetry Monday: April 4, 2022
By Categories: Literature, Poetry Monday

 “Oh, to be in England, now that April’s there”

Who said that?  If we really can’t remember, we can Google it, as we do almost everything nowadays.  I just did, and it was Robert Browning.

Good morning everyone.  Of course we’d love to be where cowslips  and other lovely flowers are blooming, but they’re also a-bloom in California and anywhere in the world where we don’t have to swallow antihistamines for protection against loveliness.

“April, April, weep thy girlish laughter
Then a morning after
Weep thy girlish tears”

If you’ve heard of William Watson, you now have, because he’s the one who said that. Continue reading Poetry Monday: April 4, 2022

Poetry Monday: March 7, 2022
By Categories: Poetry Monday

 

                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Giannini

Good morning, everyone!  We last featured David Giannini in 2011, but are welcoming him again now for a very special reason: the gorgeousness of his new book.  Yes, the word is accurate, and you’ll soon learn why.

Meanwhile, I do hope you, dear readers, have survived all our recent holidays in the midst of a year like few we have ever known and now come to us fully vaccinated, boosted and masked if you’re not home alone.

“The Dawn of Nothing Important” (Dos Madres Press, 2022) is so beautiful that I had to stand it up to admire it before beginning to read the poems, which are fully deserving also of anyone’s admiration.  It now takes pride of place on my shelves, as it may on yours, unless you choose to display it on a coffee table for visitors to pick up and admire.

Award-winning poet David Giannini has been giving us wonderful poems for many years.  But that’s not all he’s done. He has been a gravedigger, a beekeeper, a professor at Williams College, the University of Massachusetts and Berkshire Community College, having begun his teaching career with Continue reading Poetry Monday: March 7, 2022

POETRY MONDAY: September 6, 2021
By Categories: Literature, Poetry Monday

Good morning, Everyone,

Happy Post-Labor Day!

I wish I could mandate that you must be vaccinated and masked to read this column, but since I can’t I can only hope that those of you who can will be if you plan to venture outside once again –and especially, inside.

In times like these, one of the best, most soul-healing things we can do is read poetry.

Our poet today is one I have wanted to introduce for some time.  Here she is:                                 

 Mihaela Moscaliuc

This lovely poet learned English in school in Romania, from a teacher who lent them books in English such as “Catch-22,” “Lord of the Flies” and “The Catcher in the Rye.”

Amazingly, he also had his students listen to records with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen – just like so many American teenagers.

Mihaela came to the U.S. when she was twenty-four to pursue graduate studies and since then has published a number of successful poetry collections. Among them are Cemetery Ink (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) and Father Dirt (Alice James Books, 2010).  She was the translator of Liliana Ursu’s  Clay and Star (Etruscan Press, 2014) and Carmelia Leonte’s The Hiss of the Viper (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014) and is the editor of Insane Devotion: On the Writings of Gerald Stern (Trinity University Press, 2016).  With her husband, the well-known poet Michael Waters, she co- Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: September 6, 2021