Category: Literature

November in Door County No sunset cruise, no Cherry Train, No gentle, soft, refreshing rain; No trilliums, no daffodils, No biking up those long steep

I love the way the following poem by Susie Patlove opens, with the little rooster trying to “be what he feels he must be.” This poet lives in Massachusetts, in a community called Windy Hill, which must be a very good place for chickens, too.

A Cold Silent Air           The wind is silent     But the windmill is turning     Haunted winter wind     No pine branch moving     Ghostly windmill revolving     In the still night air     A knock on the door     The cold air […]

Three A.M. Phone Call   A scythe propped open our bedroom door as a subzero wind shouldered its way in             and blew the roof right off The floor began to tilt our boy’s guitar skidding   With the lift of a muddy hand the Reaper reached to tear our symmetrical family shape            into […]

Three A.M. Phone Call A scythe propped open our bedroom door as a subzero wind shouldered its way in and blew the roof right off The floor began to tilt our boy’s guitar skidding With the lift of a muddy hand the Reaper reached to tear our symmetrical family shape into a jagged triangle but […]

Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes.

It was recently my pleasure to receive notification that a poem by Estella Lauter has tied for first place in the adult division of the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest conducted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF).

In seven years, we’ve got a whole new body.     – Li-Young Lee, Breaking the Alabaster Jar     A European doctor on emergency duty in Gaza says     it’s like being bombed in a cage,           and I think of how it must seem     to those […]

Snowbound   The stomach determines contentment or distress – that pouch behind the ribs hanging like a wattle inflates the kitchen table till it touches walls, makes the speck of grit inside my sock swell into a boulder, the faucet’s steady drip, drip, drip wear enamel off my tooth. To what do I owe this […]

There are lots of poems in which a poet expresses belated appreciation for a parent, and if you don’t know Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” you ought to look it up sometime.