“This is / why every day I thank God / I was born a woman.” A new poem from Julie R. Enszer.
Arts & Cultural Critique
Coming To Istanbul
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“The Ottoman historian pours you / tahn and wine into the sunset. // Follow the lights on the bridge / into the chandelier of the sky.” A new poem from Peter Balakian.
Spirituality
My Mother Died on Simchat Torah
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Philip Terman confronts the heartbreaking, cyclical nature of life in his poem “My Mother Died on Simchat Torah.”
Uncategorized
Psalm 11:16
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In Joy Ladin’s poem “Psalm 11:16,” creation becomes an act of connection and love.
Spirituality
Gardener in the Wild
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Jennifer Michael Hecht’s poem “Gardener in the Wild” is an invigorating look into identity and the natural world.
Poetry
The Voyages of the Starship Enterprise
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Jennifer Michael Hecht’s poem asks us: how does it feel to be post-exilic, post-textilic,
and post-Cyrillic?
Spirituality
Blood Moon
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Delve into visions and religion on Easter eve in Patrick Donnelly’s poem “Blood Moon.”
Home Page
The Master of the Good Name
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The Master of the Good Name who only lived for prayer, trembled by the holy ark because a Name so pure was more than a body could bear.
Special Web Articles
Dante’s Politics
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The decorative mosaic adorning the ancient synagogue floor
is innocent of its future. Good luck, it means to say, or
my swastika hands miming perpetual motion wish you
everlasting peace and prosperity. And what coincidence
sends my son running across the plaza, blowing again
and again on his precious pinwheel toy? Say what you mean,
I want to shout. I am listening to the politicians
in the courtyard, excavating for small truths buried
beneath thick stratum of tedious lies.
Reviews
Words of Devotion
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Before the Door of God
Edited by Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson
The Sea Sleeps: New and Selected Poems
by Greg Miller
Once in the West
by Christian Wiman
Poetry
In Memory of C.K. Williams (1936-2015)
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Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams reads “Tar” and “The Day Continues Lovely.”
Reviews
From the Ruins of Europe: Lyacos’s Debt-Riddled Greece
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If the postmodernists celebrated a departure from objective truths, Lyacos offers a vision of subjective return. Though his view is more pragmatic than ideal, Lyacos argues for a new interpretation of God, the Bible, and their roles in contemporary society.
Reviews
Writing and Spirituality
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Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places
Gary Snyder, in conversation with Julia Martin
Trinity University Press, 2014
Nobody Home presents three interviews conducted by South African scholar and writer Julia Martin with the poet Gary Snyder that take place from the late 1980s to 2010, along with a selection of letters between them covering the same period. Martin was a young academic in apartheid South Africa when she first reached out to Snyder, motivated by her critical work on his poetry and thinking. Martin’s study and practice of Buddhism and her intuitive grasp of Snyder’s importance as a forefather of a growing international movement of spiritual environmentalism provoked Snyder to respond with sympathy and encouragement. They had an instant rapport in letters, which led to the interviews. This is a great period for Snyder, as his thinking about the nondualism of self/no-self and its relation to the world and all phenomena is culminating in his concentration on finishing Mountains and Rivers Without End, one of the crowning works of his generation of poets.
2015
Do You See Me
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Between earth and Heaven? I’ve never been anything but alone. But your face warms my world. Everything that blooms, blooms from you. When you look at me,
My heart sweetens.
2015
Babel
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They used to conspire in a brother tongue
no one else could parse. They were its sole native speakers,
these sons of mine
who grew up talking their way to the table. They come back as men to the keep
of my kitchen, the habit of food and talk,
leaving their rented rooms
half a life away. Who are these children-in-disguise
with their beards and glasses,
smoking and joking, each in his own tongue,
about who knows what? Don’t get twin beds, I begged my mother, afraid
of the slightest space
between him and her—a nightstand
with its drawers and knobs,
foursquare and stolid as a gravestone,
the two of them
buried on either side.