MLK Day 2024: Listen to Those on the Margins

Martin Luther King Day, 2024, finds the world wracked by war, teeming with refugees fleeing various persecutions, people suffering from deep poverty, while a minority of world’s people live in the wealthy ignorance of privilege. How do we change this? How do those of us who live in the wealthy parts of this weeping world

“Poems for a Deadly Troubled Time” Philip C. Kolin’s White Terror / Black Trauma: Resistance Poems about Black History

Philip C. Kolin’s beautiful new book, White Terror Black Trauma, serves as a guidebook on American history. Its poems lead the reader through a history most of us were never taught: the centuries of white violence inflicted on black people. From 1619 and the violence of American slavery, to the era of lynching, the Tulsa

800 Years Ago: St. Francis Gives the Nativity to Poor People at Greccio

In December of 1223, St. Francis of Assisi gave the world a gift. He and some of the first brothers were staying at a hermitage in the Rieti Valley, near the town of Greccio. Francis had always been moved by the obvious poverty of the birth of Jesus and so he wanted to show his

You Can Help to Resettle a Refugee

Yes, you can. It might be the most patriotic act one can take these days. The world is teeming with people on the move from war, climate disasters, political repression. Perhaps the most vulnerable refugees today are LGBTQ refugees. These people simply seek to live safe and happy lives. But in many countries they are

Aging: A School for Confidence

Aging can teach us many lessons. Its difficult ones include humility and fragility. But some of its lessons are consoling. One of its most consoling lessons, that I have only seen recently, is confidence. I see this in my work as a teacher. Not my teaching work with students, but my work as a teacher,

Aging: A School for Humility

It’s powerful, for sure. For me, the experience of aging brings about a constant and growing awareness of one’s fragility, the temporary quality of our bodies and our days. Various health concerns emerge and cause one to embrace a kind of caution, a slowness. Whether it’s cancer or vision or the various and surprising pains,

The Healing Power of Green

I find myself in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park more than once a week. Sometimes I just drive through a section of the park, sometimes I go for a hike or a short walk. Sometimes I bring lunch and sit. Sometimes I write. There’s something about the woods, in every season, that I find soothing

Teaching Year #34: Letting the Literature Lead

Teaching Year 34 is done. Like most school years, this year held some wonderful moments and some heartbreak as well. In the classroom, the year felt successful. We had some great encounters with American Literature. From Anne Bradstreet, Emerson, Wheatley, Dickinson, and Douglass, to Whitman, Sandburg, Hughes, Coates, Silko, Clifton, and Espada, many of my

Creative & Prophetic Resistance to Injustice: One Lesson from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fifty-five years ago today, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In a cowardly act of violence, as white supremacy always is, James Earl Ray shot Dr. King from across the street, hidden. Who might have assisted Ray, we will likely never know. What we do know, is that

CRUSHED & CROWNED – Available for Pre-Order from FlowerSong Press

I am so grateful to share that CRUSHED & CROWNED, my newest poetry collection, is available for pre-order from FlowerSong Press. I am thrilled that Edward Vidaurre, and the wonderful people at FlowerSong Press have accepted this book and will bring it out in the Fall of 2023. You can order it at the link