Category: Poetry Monday

Poetry Monday: August 1, 2022
By Categories: Poetry Monday

 

Eugene Mahon

Good morning, everyone.  I do hope it’s a good one for most of you.  How I wish we could feel relieved that the pandemic is over, but of course we can’t – not yet.  And we have a new one dawning.  Hope is not a cure, but hope can help – as can poetry, which eases the soul.

Our poet today, Eugene Mahon, is someone known to many of you in the psychiatric profession, but for those who aren’t, here are some facts about his interesting background.

Eugene Mahon, M.D., is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst on the faculty of Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research.  A member of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies, Princeton, N.J., he practices adult and child psychoanalysis in New York City.

He has published four books on psychoanalysis: A Psychoanalytic Odyssey (Karnac Books, 2014), Rensal the Rabbit (Karnac Books, 2014), Boneshop of the Heart (IPBooks, 2016), and Such Stuff as Dreams: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry with an Introduction by Theodore Jacobs (IPBooks, 2022), as well as more Continue reading Poetry Monday: August 1, 2022

POETRY MONDAY: JULY 4, 2022
By Categories: Literature, Poetry Monday

                               P.D. PIN

           

Good morning, everyone.  Happy (we hope) Fourth of July, here in the good old U.S.A., in a year when we’re all worried about whether we still have a
democracy.  The good news today is that we’re finally getting somewhere with our gun laws — a bipartisan result that means we’re also finally getting somewhere with bi-partisanship.

Enough about that.  Now it time for the healing of our souls with poetry.  Our poet this morning is a brand-new one with a modest publishing history but a fascinating background.

P.D. Pin was born and raised in southwestern Ontario.  Her parents moved to Canada before she was born from Friuli, Italy, a region bordering Austria and Slovenia.  She lived in several places, like Milan, Italy, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Toronto, Ontario before moving to Western Massachusetts in 2011.

She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Western Ontario in London and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry and translation from Vermont College.  Since 2014 she has worked at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s homestead in Lenox, MA; first as a docent, then as bookstore manager, and currently as Public Programs Director. Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: JULY 4, 2022

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