To Be Well Again

In 1861, as Abraham Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois for his first term as president, he made a speech from the train car about his “grave duty” and “the principle or ideal that has kept this Union so long together.”
With his characteristic eloquence and elegance, Lincoln says
Perhaps we have come to the dreadful day of awakening, [...]

Oversharing Again

During my break from blogging, I’ve been thinking about blogging—more specifically why I do it and what I hope, however foolishly, to get from it. Part of what stirred my thinking was A New York Times Sunday Magazine article (“Exposed” by the former Gawker blogger, Emily Gould) and some thoughtful comments on Gould’s essay [...]

Messages from Trouble

The blog category I least like checking is “angst,” yet angst has always been one of the chief motives behind my writing.
I’m not proud to say so. If I’m absolutely honest, I’d much rather read work that—at least sometime—promises mild weather instead of future storms, earthquakes, and suffering. The writer who relies [...]

98 Pounds and Sand in My Face

I’ve come to regard being tagged in a meme as being called out. These tasks seem to expose me as a ninety-eight pound weakling. However, when they come from a blogger you respect and admire, how do you say no?
A week ago Christine Swint at Mariacristina tagged me—
Think of THE song that most [...]

King Ego, Part 78

At the end of her memoir Black Ice, Lorene Carey recalls sitting through commencement and awards as one of the first African-American graduates of St. Paul’s and wondering whether she would receive an award, whether she would do any more than simply graduate.
She feels a “greedy girl” roiling inside her and silently asks when [...]

There it is, Eeyore

I remember few conversations from when I was young, but I recall my mother equating each of my brothers and sisters with Winnie the Pooh characters. She seemed to know the character for me right away… but paused before saying “Eeyore.”
Maybe she meant to preserve my feelings. A reader might remember Eeyore by his [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Eavesdropping

When he was sharing
doom and the darkness he drinks,
she said, “What about
hope, and what about
stars and planets protected
from our lunacy
by outrageous space?”
She’s right of course, but he said,
“I’m here and have
only my own eyes.”
The night sky’s grand carousel
is a show to them.
And I am their audience,
stuck outside myself.

Prescribing Poetry

Teaching poetry should be easy and is perhaps the hardest teaching I do.
I don’t blame poetry—from my perspective, what could be more alluring to students than reading assignments that are crazily creative, organically mysterious, and nearly always short? Yet anyone who has seen Dead Poets Society knows teachers are not [...]

Haiku Sonnet: After the Amnesia Bomb…

Pigs chortle the same
in every language, rumbling
no longer rendered—
low fidelity—
as vowel and consonant,
but as a snort of
mud, gnawed sassafras
and blunt odors of coupling
never nameable
anyway. Nearby
humans occupy themselves
rolling around in
the cool shade, straining
to fold head to crotch.

Twelve Minutes

Friday morning a colleague told me Chicago has seen only twelve minutes of sun in February.
My first thought was, “Where would such a figure come from?” A machine, I suppose, but I pictured a despondent soul in a parking booth, stopwatch in one hand, his head in the other, leaning out [...]