A. Anupama
My middle-school homeschool students had a pool party today to celebrate the end of our year reading The Odyssey together. It was epic. They stood in the water scream-laughing about the crushes they dramatically recounted for each other from their pre-Covid schooldays. I was kicking myself: it never occurred to me to ask them to…
So you're already lying on a patio chaise or, better yet, a hammock, reading something with which you're planning to torture undergraduates in the fall? Yes, me too. I hadn't read The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, though I know that's the favorite among her collections. So, I'm reading it now, educating myself on the…
When a poem is about to be, keep your hands ready. It might have words, but sometimes instead it has sounds, flashes of light and color, pressure like an April gale, a lift of wing. I always thought it strange that such fragile things as bird eggs are laid high in tree boughs. There’s that…
Just starting to get used to daylight savings time, and just enjoying the sunrise view from my dining room until springtime brings leaves to hide the horizon for several months. A pair of doves waits with me for rosy light to spill over the river. Now. We write a poem on the minutes. If you…
"To read is to dream, guided by someone else's hand." - Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet Cloud-like - I've returned to writing poems, while my students fly off to fiction starting this week. It feels so satisfying to have shared some of the energy of poetic craft and then to find myself returned to my…
Tea is the least of it -- Subscriber Content Milk to water, one to one-and-a-half, inseparable friends in the cup. Thick as a half-inch slice of ginger peeled and rough minced, mixed with eight cloves and an inch of cinnamon. Round as a mortar, the earth, moon and sun. Nine, ten green pods of cardamom.…
