Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 28
resistance training, Bastille Day, the orbweaver’s song, Crusoe in England, and much more
A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).
This week: resistance training, Bastille Day, the orbweaver’s song, Crusoe in England, and much more. Enjoy.
Less than a month left of my summer holidays and I’ve been thinking about the blank page . . .
I don’t fear it, I fill it with nonsense mostly. Words I collect as I walk and scroll through my day: heavy-hitter verbs, pretty images, notes to myself of where I am and what I need to focus on.
I write in cafes, on buses, on my couch, sometimes in my phone but mostly on my laptop or notebook. I have files on both the computer and phone that I add notes to, so I don’t lose them while doing other things. I’ve even tried voice notes on my phone when I’m driving alone, but I don’t like that medium as well.
I borrow words or phrases from articles I’m reading, what’s going on out the window, the things my kids say:
The ice cream I ate drunk in the rain, being woken by ravens, solstice, imprecision, fears that I’m stuck, losing time, erasure, the poem locked in my brain, a firm handshake, ripe to rotten, runes of birch, flirt in the corner, inherit.
When nothing clicks I wander again through the pages to find phrases that spark. I restitch them, take the out-of-context further removed. Find connections between my days, the words that caught my eyes. Someday all I do is note and reorganise, but nothing comes together. The next day I start again.
Gerry Stewart, The Blank Page
one firefly
and the rumble
of distant fireworksBill Waters, Hopewell Valley Neighbors magazine: July ’25
Today, after an early afternoon Zoom meeting, I took my second walk of the day around the little lake near our house. It was drizzling slightly, peaceful, deserted. After weeks of ridiculously hot days, the rain felt like a respite, a deep breath. And, due to the little bit of precipitation we’ve finally received in the past two days, the wildflowers around the lake are blooming, the bees are buzzing, and there was even a baby bunny nibbling and hopping the perimeter. Flowers, raindrops, insects, bunnies. These are all small joys. And I embrace them.
I find that this summer has me letting down my guard a bit, trying to be content with less, with smaller. I’ve stopped tracking my food intake or obsessing over workouts. I’m not pushing myself to try and write when I don’t have any impetus to do so. I’m tackling yard or house work in small increments instead of spending hours at once wrecking my back. And I’m stopping to take photos on my daily walk instead of pushing my pace to just get it done. […]
And, as always, I relish small moments at home with my husband, on the phone with my son, or out sharing a meal or a walk with friends, especially those who are still teaching and share any piece of their precious summer with me. Anne Sexton’s poem “Welcome, Morning” ends with the line, “The joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard, dies young.” So I’m sharing it, even though it’s in small doses.
Donna Vorreyer, it’s the little things
To read the news is to watch the world falling apart. To tend my garden, to call a friend, to hug my daughter, to read a book and then give it away, to forgive the bunny eating my nasturtiums—this is my solace.
Carey Taylor, At the Edge of the Pyre
I’ve been thinking about how life is one big “switcherooney.” (I got that word from the lyrics of the odd little song “Satin Doll.” It appears in the bridge and should be sung with glorious vigor, by my read.) That is, you think you know what’s going on, indeed, take a whole bunch of stuff for granted, then, as my husband says, “bingo-bango,” it’s all not really what you thought. Or something has happened to change things utterly. Or you forget that something’s happened and go back to thinking life is “normal” when really, is it ever? I’ve had the flu, and last night just longed for the time (i.e., three days prior) when I could have a nice cold glass of wine and relish a dish of risotto. Instead, I could only reminisce, drag myself to the table for a few bites of said risotto, some water, then back to bed. Of course, other people face far more challenging shit than the flu. There’s an article in The Guardian by a guy who actually had a pretty good life in Gaza. Before. I see on Facebook that today is the birthday of a talented and delightfully quirky poet whose t-shirt commemorating the publishing of her last book I happened to be wearing. And when I say “last,” I mean, final. And here’s this poet, whom I did not know at all, nor really knew her work, but social media showed her often grinningly full of life. I only understood later what all those postings over this year had been about. Switcherooney, mothafuckas. There is no holding still, no capacity for gratitude is ever enough to keep things in place. But I guess it’s all we got.
Marilyn McCabe, I hear that somber wail of a horn,
Did you know this is Disability Awareness Month? I’ve been spending a lot of time deep breathing and walking in the lavender field to take my mind off the stress of this week’s passing of the “Big Bill” that will end up taking away money from disabled people, hospitals, nursing homes, and of course, hungry children. I didn’t celebrate July 4th at all—no fireworks, except Glenn made a cake to share with neighbors, which feels appropriate. I guess after cutting SNAP we better up our donations to food banks too. Not feeling very fond of my country, and especially its leadership, right now.
So, my anger and the urgency of the issues made me turn to an unfamiliar genre—essays, which will be read by more people and faster than poetry. So, I sent out two essays and one of them was already accepted (to be published in September). Luckily, the timing of my essay writing class could not be better—prompts and workshops every week and I’m already feeling more confident. I feel like the abled world does not understand the thin thread that disabled/chronically ill people walk between dying and not dying all the time—based on insurance, availability of drugs and doctors and hospitals, and oh yeah, a caretaker because you can’t do everything anymore.
This “big beautiful bill” puts everything on that thin line in jeopardy, and Republicans that signed it have signed the literal death warrant for disabled people, people in poverty, and some of those poor and disabled will be children. I hope the tax cut for billionaires will be worth it for them. I hope they all lose their seats in congress when people figure out what they’ve done. I cannot wait for Trump and the GOP to be out of power. It cannot happen soon enough—and literally, if it doesn’t, I will be forced to reconsider leaving the country. Did I mention Microsoft has laid off 15,000 in two months? (That’s where my insurance comes from, from Glenn’s job.) So that isn’t helping my anxiety at all. I am looking at viable options for both school and work out of the country at this point, just in case. A place with free health care and free school would be amazing. Why don’t we have those things in this country? Why don’t we start demanding them? One of the themes of this year’s Pride parade was “loud” and I feel like that applies to Disability Awareness Month as well. Keeping quiet will not protect us and it won’t protect others.
But I would be amiss if I didn’t say I was thankful to receive my contributor’s copy of Cave Wall, where I had a poem, “Self-Portrait as Wisteria on a May Night.” There were lots of friends in the TOC too.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, Disability Awareness Month, the Big Bill Spells Disaster, and Essay Writing, Plus a New Poem in Cave Wall Review
Funny how this thing done with pulleys and dumb-
bells is called resistance training: resistance
meaning the capacity to oppose or withstand
an obstacle or impeding force, the biggest one
in this case being your own body— each day toting
its limbs and organs around, so long carrying
brickloads of grief it’s forgotten how to let go of.Luisa A. Igloria, Weight
My Instagram followers will note that I read a lot while we were away, and I loved it. I wrote about 14 new poems…ok, drafts of poems. Some of which may never make it out of first gear, but I have high hopes for 3 or 4. I made some notes and ideas for a few more, so I think the universe is telling me that I need to quit my day job and spend my days reading and writing. Easy.
I presume the funding for that will be earned via poetry. I’ll check my next ALCS statement.
While that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to become a billionaire to do it, I decided I’d be a terrible billionaire while I was away because I hate wearing suncream. There was a logic in there somewhere, but perhaps also several cocktails, so let’s move on.
Mat Riches, Hats off to Klaus
This week I am grateful for friends who have gone on walks with me, met me for coffee (which is often tea or water, but I call it coffee nonetheless), rung me just to say hello, and hugged me when we found ourselves brought together for a special occasion.
Here’s to hearing yourself think and finding the joy in sharing time with others.
Because I have started thinking about a possible entry for Poetry Archive NOW WordView 2025 here’s a poem that I enjoyed entering in the past. It’s about the pond in the park in Herne Bay. My brother and I used to canoe on it, my sister and I saw a gull eat a duckling after swooping for bread, and each visit home includes a walk to see if the terrapin is basking on the rock by the island. This poem was written after my sister rang me one day to tell me that the terrapin was not there but that she had seen an abandoned doll floating peacefully in the water.
[…]
Her long hair floats out like golden pondweed,
and she looks happy the abandoned doll;
eyes wide, eyelashes still curled,
that mouth.As if she doesn’t even know
she was thrown in,
left behind.Sue Finch, HOW IT STARTED, HOW IT’S GOING
A few weeks ago, my poem “The world has not been cruel to him yet” went a bit viral.
It was shared by Read A Little Poem, a poetry Instagram account with nearly 100,000 followers. My poem has now gathered over 17,000 likes, 5,000 shares, and a hundred generous comments. My mind was (and is) blown.
A week or so after the poem took on a life of its own, a new follower told me he found my poem on Reddit. Whoa, can I have the link? I asked. He sent it over and I made Rookie Mistake #1:I read through the comments.
Allison Mei-Li, My poetry was torn apart on Reddit
On X (Twitter) today I found the following quote posted by poet Ilya Kaminsky — quoting recently deceased poet Fanny Howe (1940-2025). Howe’s poetic statement, quoted below, is one that applies (for me, at least) to both poetry and mathematics:
One way to understand your own condition is to write something and spend a long time revising it.
In revising you teach yourself. You find your own information buried in your body. It is still alive until you are not.
JoAnne Growney, Learning by Writing . . . and Revising . . .
Literature, like life, offers us ways of imagining freedom in relation to duration, where ‘taking up time’ becomes a measure of value. Resignation makes a subconscious pact with fatedness: “This is how things will be, for they can be no other way.” “This is the hand I’ve been dealt, and it was bound to happen to me.” “This is my curse.” “This is the curse of my blood-line.” “This is the fate of my people.” etc. etc. etc.
“The fated man looks for the choice that is choosing him,” wrote Dan Beachy-Quick. The heart of the heroic quest, its epic form, involves being defined by what one has chosen to do. To some degree, writing, or the decision to write, to pursue a life in writing, borrows from this convention. Just as the reader recollects the ocean breeze and the tartness of tangerines when reading Proust, the writer recalls the places, faces, voices, and images that animated her interior landscape when writing the book. The experience of reading makes those worlds available to us again.
Alina Stefanescu, Little kingdoms in yr chest
I can’t quite remember when I first drafted this poem. 2019 perhaps, or maybe during Covid. It has gone on to be a central part of the pamphlet and the accompanying show, and one I often read on stage. I spent a few years avoiding it and trying not to read it but then realised that it is actually one of my strongest pieces of work. It was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2021, so I’ll assume there’s something good about it!
Like a lot of my poems, I think that perhaps it’s improved by being read in a Northern Irish accent. It is based in truth, and in fact its original name was the real name of the boy it’s about (big reveal: it isn’t Neil). I had to change it because his family are actually a well-known political family in Northern Ireland, and I didn’t want this to be too on the nose. In many ways, the poem is about a lot of families in Ulster, and a lot of boys and girls in playgrounds there, and indeed across the world. The central truths of it are perhaps that not everyone fits in, people (particularly children) can be cruel and this is passed on generation to generation, and also that you just don’t ever know what’s going on in somebody’s life.
Drop-in by Pete Strong [Nigel Kent]
Another first draft to last draft post! The poem I’m going to share this time has just been published in the most recent issue of The Poetry Review. I think there’s some really exciting poems in there – a new poem from poet, novelist and my long-suffering line manager Andrew McMillan for starters. And I was excited to see new work from Jacob Polley which really feels as if it is pushing into new directions. I think one of my favourite poems in the issue was “A Slug Eating a Plum in an Espresso Cup” by Padraig Regan, which starts
This open-ended tubular sac of four-way-stretch muscle, this insistent foot goes about its mouth-exploring over the plum’s film-thin purple-burnished skin like a symbol for disease. Which it’s not.
I like how the grotesque is tipping over into sensuality and back again here, and how it feels as if language is exceeding itself with those runs of hyphenated words. I also like how the poem uses simile to try and make a symbol of the slug and then catches itself doing so and resits that urge to make human meaning out of nature.
Kim Moore, First Draft to Last Draft
T.S. Eliot’s quote that poems must be felt before they can be understood is quite true, but it has licensed a whole method of reading poetry that has very little to do with the art of language. He did not say that they must be felt instead of being understood. Indeed, poetry is the marriage of emotion and logic. Many people, of course, do largely see “culture” as a means of personal reflection or a kind of therapy. Whole books have been written about this. I would only urge those people to think about how useful poetry can be for that purpose if you have not taken pains to understand the language which they are using as a psychological mirror. All art is a means of understanding the self; it is the methods of understanding which are disputed.
This is all that close reading is: the understanding of how language is being used. Some people will begin talking about I.A. Richards, William Empson, the Cambridge method, and so on. Dip into those cold pools at your pleasure. My intention here, in this new series of close readings, is all to do with practice. Good literary criticism is a kind of higher common sense, underwritten by deep knowledge and an aptitude for the formal modes of literary analysis. I shall avoid talk of “texts” in the Stanley Fish sense, and there will be no nonsense about using the “text” as a means of interpolating our own ideas into the poems. We read the lines; we are not reading “between” the lines.
The risk of close reading is that it becomes dull.
Henry Oliver, Herrick: To Daffodils
Dickinson jotted the first draft of “[The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants]” on the back of an envelope in 1874 and later sent the complete poem to her Norcross cousins, who copied it down for posterity but lost the original. When Fanny Norcross shared it with one of Dickinson’s first editors, T. W. Higginson, she noted in the letter, “I was so much impressed with its weirdness and originality.”
From “Elf” to “Apostate,” Dickinson’s supernaturally inflected language suggests how the mushroom defies Nature’s rules, sneaking through the landscape surreptitiously and vanishing without saying its prayers. Dickinson’s poem is disobedient, too, in ways that are typical for her–shifting pronouns, irregular punctuation and capitalization, twisty syntax, slant rhymes–but I find it more difficult than much of her work. This is partly because she uses some words in antique and unusual ways, “circumspect” as a noun, for instance. (So the mushroom is a deviant child of circumspection, paradoxically created by parental vigilance?) I have no idea why Nature’s face is “supple” or how a mushroom can be a “Germ of Alibi.” I don’t think I’m getting all the allusions, either, although surely “Tares,” in this context, suggests the Biblical parable of weeds sown among the wheat. I found this wonderful blog post by Giles Watson that pegs the “Bubble” to Macbeth in a convincing way. (His post only seems to exist on Goodreads now.) Watson connects mycorrhizal poetry to revolution, conjuring a means of allusion and networking that fosters resistance. He’s so right: a rebellious spirit is strongly latent in this cryptic poem.
Lesley Wheeler, Dickinson’s fungal weirdness
Ovid is the single most frequently cited classical source in Book 2, and sometimes the plants themselves refer us to him. In many cases their names and stories come from Ovid, and in other cases Cowley has made up Ovidian-style stories to explain their transformation from girls into plants. But in another sense, these eloquent female herbs, engaging in scientific debate and electing their own leaders after their transformation, present a sustained challenge to Ovid. Most of the women transformed into plants or animals in the Metamorphoses, whether following rape or in an attempt to evade it,are rendered mute by their transformation, or reduced only to inarticulate cries.1 But these female plants repeatedly relate their own assault and subsequent transformation as merely the beginning of an ultimately triumphant story of medicinal utility.
In Book 1, for instance, Nymphea (Water Lily) describes how after being raped by Hercules, she wept so much that a pool gathered around her feet. Jupiter took pity on her and turned her into a plant which, she explains, is effective as an anti-aphrodisiac. As she says:
Nunc equidem totos dego genialiter annos.
Crede mihi, Plantae turba beata sumus.
[. . .]
Certè hominum miseret, quos mille incommoda vitae,
Et ferus exercet, Maxima pestis, Amor.
Non ignara mali, veterúmve oblita dolorum,
Extinguo flammas, saeve Cupido, tuas.But now in fact I pass my time pleasantly all year round.
Believe me, we Plants are a blessed lot.
[. . .]
Indeed we pity men, whom a thousand cares beset,
And the greatest plague of all, ferocious Love.
Not ignorant myself of that evil, nor forgetful of my previous pain,
I extinguish your flames, savage Cupid.Cowley’s note on this line is very direct: ‘Those who drink this plant are unable to have sex or to conceive for twelve days’, a piece of information attributed to Pliny. Nymphea has her revenge upon male sexual aggression by disabling it in the most literal way.
The herbs of Book 1 are useful for a whole range of ailments; but the female herbs of Book 2 are all useful specifically in matters of reproduction. They have assembled at night to hold a learned debate on the causes of menstruation (a live topic in medical discussion of the period) and the ethics of abortion. The latter is a pertinent question because, as both the text and Cowley’s notes make clear, many of these herbs can be used to ‘regulate’ a woman’s periods, speed up labour or induce delivery of a stillborn child (thus potentially saving the mother) — but also to terminate a pregnancy.
Victoria Moul, Cowley’s Mugwort
Sometimes you can be forcibly reminded how very different the world is outside the English-speaking, industrialised and largely urbanised west. But there are two things that really bring me up short. In this country we often see poetry as an elite art form, for the leisured middle-class, or the socially alienated. And we see herbal medicine as the preserve of the ‘worried well’ who can afford to pay for alternative practitioners, or the conspiracy theorists who do not trust science. But once we get beyond our own blinkered and relatively privileged mindset, into the wider world, we find that for most of the cultures on the planet, poetry and herbs are not just luxury goods, but part of the foundations of everyday life – actual ‘kitchen sink issues’.
Poirot’s use of tisanes is presented as a rather quaint foreign quirk, almost a brandmark like the moustache and the need for symmetry, but many European mothers would start with chamomile or lime-flower tea before they would give their child Calpol. Herbalists Without Borders sounds like a rather recherché niche group, but they principally work with refugees who see herbal medicine as their default. HWB say that it is the form of medical care they are most familiar with as many migrants are used to treating their own minor ailments with herbs they have grown themselves. Western style medicine is expensive where they’re from, and often involves long travel. Sometimes it is associated with trauma or even torture, so the holistic and individual approach of herbalists is easier and more approachable for them. […]
The other thing migrants take with them are songs. Moya Cannon has a collection entitled Carrying the songs, addressing this, as Irish migrants were too deprived to be able to take anything else. A parallel emerged recently from previously enslaved communities in Georgia where what had been thought of as a family bit of rhyming doggerel turned out to be a word-for word transmission of a funeral song in the Mende language from West Africa. Poetry and music overlap in this context until some people hardly distinguish between the two forms. I know I compose in bars of music rather than metrical feet! Poetry is as skilled as music to compose, but unlike music it can be shared by people who don’t perform. It is the most shared art-form among many people, easily memorised, easily transmitted, removed from the everyday transactional conversations, allowing focussed attention and giving dignity to the subject. In most other cultures, poetry is used to reflect, to protest, remember, lament and celebrate. I once heard Caroline Forché tell a story about a Columbian man coming to her door, and saying “There’s going to be a revolution, we need a poet’. She suggested a journalist might be more relevant, but he insisted that a poet was what was needed, insight rather than reportage.
Elizabeth Rimmer, Of Herbs and Poetry
3 – How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I am always “collecting data”—literally collecting instances of plants or weather or bus routes, among other things. And I am always assembling poems and other things from that data and from observations and impressions. Projects are less things I begin and more things I realize are happening when I put a frame around some of the things that are already ongoing. Because I am writing all the time—not very much at a time, but in a more or less continuous way—by the time my brain catches up and begins to suggest forms or ‘project’ ideas, the work is almost always there in pieces. So things come slowly and then happen quickly. That means tracing a single draft is, at least in the last five or ten years, less straightforward. And in fact I’m interested in the way the same phrase, image, idea may recur across poems or other work, without ever getting “used up”. […]6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Yes, I am trying to figure out how language does what it does. I am also interested in charisma: how can the writing convince the world to look (not necessarily at the writing but at the world)? What are the uses of charisma on the page and how does it appear? And I am also trying to see what it’s like to work in as narrow a circumference as I can, and, relatedly, how to insist that nothing is beneath notice. I am trying to ask myself to stay with things I might be tempted to say have been resolved, or can be taken for granted. I am trying to ask myself, “how do you know?” when I say, “I know”.7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think the role of the writer should be like the role of the bus driver, librarian, teacher, grocery store worker, post officer, etc.: to do what you do as fully as possible, with as deep a sense of being among other people whose lives are as real and precious as your own as possible. To be attentive and to care for others’ attentiveness. To take time and to make a world in which others can also take time.rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Éireann Lorsung
Once again, I am indebted to Isobar, and Paul Rossiter, for broadening my knowledge of poetry, never having read [Lindley Williams] Hubbell before. I share his hope that these books will bring him to a wider readership. Hubbell may not rank as a ‘major’ poet, but very few do. However, his body of work as represented here is significant, and forms an interesting extension to the story of American modernist poetry, particularly its relationship with Japan, which he extends beyond the boundaries of what might roughly be termed the Beat tradition. And in ‘Long Island Triptych’ he wrote one of the more interesting mid-length poems of the mid-century period. Read him.
Billy Mills, Selected Poems and Long Island Triptych by Lindley Williams Hubbell: A Review
Every time I’m asked about which writers have been an influence on me, I cite bpNichol. I was an undergrad at York University in the mid-80s studying music and taking some writing clases. In my first year, when my favourite writer was Seamus Heaney, I took a poetry workshop with bp. He entirely blew my mind—he caught “the heart [and mind] off guard and [blew] it open.” He introduced me to a new world of contemporary writing, not only his own work, but the vital and exciting exploratory work of contemporary Canada and beyond.
And more than that, he was a model of what a writer could be: curious, community-oriented, involved in everything (visual, sonic and other poetries, digital and computer work publishing, small press, fiction, comics, music, mentoring, children’s writing, playwrighting, collaborating, organizing…) and supportive and generous to everyone. I hadn’t really considered feminism but he brought in some small press periodicals (which I noted he was mentioned on the masthead as a supporter) with work such as Nicole Brossard included.
Without exaggeration, he changed the course of my life. Though I’d been interested in experimental music, I hadn’t thought of literature in this way. I learned from his model of generosity, community-involvement, mentorship, and curiosity. I didn’t know what a writer, musician or creative person might look like, beyond the “great man” tropes. I have aspired to be the kind of writer and creator that bp was—omniverious, curious, supportive, productive, unpretentious and entirely open to the possibilities of creativity.Last year, bp would have turned 80 and I finally finished an ongoing tribute project, using archival recordings of his performances to make new work. The result is my album I after H: music after bpNichol.
In April this year, Jason Camlot and Kathryn Macleod devoted an entire SONIC LIT: a spoken web radio show to the album. I was completely thrilled. They played the album and parts of a conference presentation from some years ago where I spoke about the creation and source of some of the work and they provided their own insights and commentary. Here’s the link to the podcast: Sonic Lit
I thought I’d share my entire conference talk and the complete album.Gary Barwin, bpNichol: a tribute album
When and how were you introduced to haiku and Japanese poetry forms?
My pregnancy with my son was incredibly challenging, both physically and mentally. It had been a few years since I had any involvement with poetry, but I found a book of haiku poetry at my local thrift store and became hooked. It was a season of life for me where everything felt very complicated and stressful, and the simplicity of haiku and the almost meditative act of writing one became a type of therapy to me during that time.
What do you enjoy the most about haiku?
I enjoy the layers of meaning that can be hidden within those three short lines; it often feels like a puzzle, and I love the challenge of deciphering them.
Jacob D. Salzer, Sophia Conway
“Skail” is an old Scots word meaning scattering or dispersal. Richie McCaffery’s poems explore that theme in a post-lockdown world and the aftermath of the ending a long-term relationship. McCaffery’s use of third person, rather than a poetic “I”, gives the poems a universal, rather than personal, lens. These are poems for participatory, not passive, readers. […]
In the title poem, the ashes of a great grandfather were partially distributed to flowerpots,
“a tot of his favourite whisky was left out to slake his thirst.
But the bulk of his ash was left to her, and went
headfirst into the remains of the vegetable bed.
And though it was a wet night, the dust cloud of him
hovered under the streetlamp, as if getting its bearings.” […]There is a resonance throughout “Skail”. McCaffery’s crafted poems thoughtfully explore how individuals can find a new sense of purpose after a separation, of whatever cause. Grief is handled sensitively as a necessary period where loss is acknowledged and a new purpose found. “Skail” is a short collection with a strong sense of heft and compassion.
Emma Lee, “Skail” Richie McCaffery (New Walk Editions) – book review
I’ve been thinking about Elizabeth Bishop’s “Crusoe in England” for many years. It’s a strange poem: ostensibly a dramatic monologue in the voice of Robinson Crusoe, back in England, reflecting on how he survived solitary island life. Full of anachronisms and dreamlike tangents, it’s clear Bishop is not trying to truthfully inhabit Crusoe, but rather the archetype of the Crusoe figure: the castaway who builds a new world from available materials and is utterly self-reliant. What does this do to a person? The poem explores such a particular and profound contrast of human destinies. Some people are marooned or exiled, and rely solely upon themselves in a strange land; others live their entire lives within a family and never leave their hometown. Which would be the more representative, or more true, of human experience, if one had undergone both? […]
The structure and length of the poem showcase two key elements of Bishop’s style: precision and patience. It’s a long poem with subtle, varied music. No line is throwaway; no line appears which hasn’t been tested and weighed meticulously. And yet nothing feels overcooked. The sounds are naturally variegated, and the line- and stanza-lengths fall like natural speech. Crusoe prevaricates, changes the subject, and the lines switch between almost-empty phatic exchange and symbolically charged content. This confident pacing and confiding, indiscreet tone creates imaginative space in the poem, making room for the reader – one of Bishop’s hallmarks. Like Frost, she has mastered the art of using the sound and rhythm of phatic language – the speech we throw in purely to enhance and facilitate social relationships – to create a resting or listening space within the poem, a space that gives the reader the opportunity to enter, and to create meaning. This patience and confidence is often confused with ideas of feminine restraint and quietness by some male critics. I’m always surprised when these critics misinterpret her technique as feminine delicacy or reserve, I see it as much more wily and daring: the use of unpoetic, vulnerable language in a medium where we are always being told that “every word counts.” In this case it’s a way of humanising the castaway archetype and emphasising his social isolation.
Lisa Brockwell, Each Nick and Scratch by Heart: Elizabeth Bishop’s Island Industries
Melech Ravitch was the pen name of Zekharye-Khone Bergner (1893–1976). A poet, essayist, playwright, and cultural activist. Ravitch was born in Radymno, eastern Galicia [in Poland]. He was raised in a secular home, where the primary languages were Polish and German. He began to write poetry in Yiddish under the influence of the 1908 Czernowitz Conference, an international conference on Yiddish language and its role in Jewish life. He was also widely traveled, living in Australia, Argentina, Mexico, and Montreal, where he died in 1976. This poem on the Statue of Liberty is interesting, particularly in contrast to Yehudis’ story, for its frankly sexual address to the statue as a symbol of liberty. Here, in the United States of the 21st century, it’s hard not to hear the ending of the poem as Christological, but I doubt very much that’s how Ravitch meant it. It’s more likely that he meant it as an expression of hope for the United States as “the land of the free.”
Richard Jeffrey Newman, Four By Four #42
It’s also been way too warm for many random neighborhood wanderings this summer. I feel like I spend less time out in the world even while going out much more than I used to somehow. Considering how terrible the world is, this may be a good thing. We’re planning a couple overnights (including the drive in!) in the next few weeks, so that will help me feel less caged up surely, as well as making plans for things like museum and planetarium visits over the next couple of months. Plus, theater outings as soon as the coffers refill from wedding spending.
Mostly, I am working. On articles, on the memoir project, on new poems. Or, depending on the day’s focus, on layouts and cover designs and assembling orders and author copies. This takes most of the day each day, even on weekends, punctuated only by outings later in the day, after the sun has been vanquished by twilight. We’re still in that period when the days feel long and full of possibility. I know it ends, it always does, but even inside, it helps my mental health immensely to see the sun set well after 8pm. Lately, it’s been stormy and rainy like much of the country, with banks of clouds moving in late in the day.
Kristy Bowen, notes & things / 7/14/ 2025
What feels like
an exclamation is often a question mark.
The parentheses don’t hold us together
as much set the sentence free. There
are nights when the moon feels too full.
When destruction is inevitable. When
the words cannot be parsed anymore.Rajani Radhakrishnan, In case of emergency break glass
Years, moves, relationships, marriage, serious injury, and weight-gain later, I am still a walker. Still parting the branches to reveal paths. Still driving slowly by mysterious wormholes into other worlds. Living half the state away from The Rachel Carson Trail, I rarely step foot on the trail named after the beloved woman who raised environmental awareness to the laymen back in the 1960s. She lived on a homestead in Springdale, just down river from where I grew up. I briefly volunteered there as a counselor for the children’s summer nature program. […]
Yesterday, I set foot on the trail for the first time in what feels like years. I duct taped the bottoms of my feet to prevent hot spots. I pre-froze the Gatorade. I packed extra socks. I packed high-carb and salty junk from my parents’ barbecue the day before. I had my trusty bandana which I’d keep wet the entire time in order to dab my neck and face to prevent overheating. My goal was at least ten miles which would take me to a gas station that would be easy for my dad to find to pick me up. I won’t narrate my hike, so here are some very simple poems that I dictated to my phone while on the trail:
Not a fossil,
but mud-baked
footprints.The orbweaver’s
cellophane song.
Hear the crackle
of her silk
as you pull it
from your face, arms.
Where the hell is she?!The chipmunk crosses
the hot path
beyond my steamed glasses
like a hallucination.Sarah Lada, Day’s Eye
I never met Fanny Howe, who died on July 9, 2025. Poetry is anchored in community, and sometimes, when a poet dies, you feel like some thread of your poetic life has been unthreaded. You are missing a piece of the mystical literary world that carried you forward.
Poetry is a lonely business, and in that lonely world, we find our tribe. I like C.D. Wright, Anne Carson, Evie Shockley, Brenda Cardenas. The writers I find an alliance with are dirty-booted and wild. But we read beyond our own. Howe was a giant in the world of letters, someone poets like myself, who are just getting wet, would read and learn from. I want to re-read Fanny’s work, beginning with “Loneliness.”
I’ve struggled to understand how a famous person could feel lonely. I thought famous people were surrounded, and that it was the rest of us who got to enjoy loneliness. Fanny was well known her whole life, born into famous. In an interview with LitHub, Fanny recounts how she dropped out of Stanford and became a writer, a profession of the “family trade” that she felt would allow her to try to “live up to [her] privilege.
I found her experience of becoming a writer strangely opposite to my own life: the cult until age eighteen, the living in my car, then the attic, the struggle to get through state schools, then get a PhD, support a family, start a press with no money and no true reason. I stepped out of the cult and then made my already thrashed and beaten life as difficult as possible, as far from Martha’s Vineyard as one can be. Yet I enter Fanny Howe’s poetry and feel it beating inside me like a heart.
Kate Gale, On Fanny Howe: The Dragon of History
They are fighting
as if during the Revolution – it’s Bastille Day –
over a bottle of poured or rented or drunk water.
They are growling through their teeth
as two people might seethe over how
to say “hamburger.” After the old man sits,(deadringer for “Boudu” fished out of the Seine)
he tries to ferret away his dear bottle. The garçon
runs to wrest the green Perrier from his grip.
Half empty, half full, it’s all the same.
Under the shade of the chestnut trees along
a boulevard in Ménimontant.Jill Pearlman, Half Empty, Half Full
I’ve heard that inside all that rises there is light.
Inside the light, a library. Inside the library, a cherished book of heart.
To read the heart is to know the heart better.
Within that heart, love assumes many forms—
child, floodless river, enigma.
Here, the journey isn’t complete. But the going gets a little easier.
Rich Ferguson, After the Flood
The feisty old woman on television
said “no matter what cages they build,
I’m free in here,” tapping her heart.
She makes it look so easy.
The floodwaters of my mind carve
channels of worry, and I never know
when my river is going to overflow.
Repeat, “This is sadness, but I am not.”
Widen the mind’s mesh, and let
the grief float downstream,
somewhere out of sight.Rachel Barenblat, Instead of grieving the news
by what thread will i spin when the sun unravels
will the last of my bodies fly away with the geese
knowing your purpose is the fall of rain
how gently can you liveGrant Hackett [no title]