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Peggy Rosenthal

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November 2016

November 28, 2016

Saying Yes to the Annunciation

Of all the Gospel episodes, the Annunciation has long been one of the favorites of...

November 03, 2016

Twitter #Micropoetry

Tootling around on Twitter, I’ve come upon a delightful community of poets. Their hashtag is...

October 2016

October 19, 2016

Reading (in) Walden

What are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only...

October 14, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Nothing More” by Todd Davis

Whenever I first meet a long skinny poem, I ask myself: Why has the poet...

September 2016

September 26, 2016

Looking for a Good Laugh

In his collection of delightfully reflective and paradoxical mini-stories, Espejos (Mirrors), Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano...

September 23, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Visitation Rights” by Jeffrey Harrison

I sometimes talk to friends who have died. Especially to friends who acted as spiritual...

September 09, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The News”

What do I do with the daily news of disasters? Do I mumble a quick...

August 2016

August 30, 2016

Margo Jefferson’s Negroland

In her photo on the jacket flap of Negroland: A Memoir, Margo Jefferson looks to...

August 26, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The Embrace”

Poetry can recall us to the sensuousness of ordinary experience. Elizabeth Smither does this in...

August 19, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Recovery”

What I like about this poem is how it slides almost unnoticeably from a simple,...

August 09, 2016

Fit for Immortality?

“How’s your health?” my long-time friend asked me with concern. “The leukemia is creeping toward...

July 2016

July 21, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Sometimes I Am Permitted”

On my first reading of this poem, I felt disoriented by all the non sequiturs,...

July 20, 2016

Why We Write

What is it about words that so moves those of us who are writers? We...

July 05, 2016

Adam Zagajewski’s Trench Warfare

“Writing poems is a duel / that no one wins…” As I’m reading the poem...

June 2016

June 17, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Tenebrae” by Anya Krugovoy Silver

This is a dark poem, raising a profound question about suffering. Its title, “Tenebrae,” is...

June 03, 2016

“Translation Back into Native Tongues” by Nicholas Samaras

There’s a sub-genre of poetry in which the speaker’s persona is a long-ago figure or...

May 2016

May 31, 2016

Richard Wilbur’s Poetry Captures Our Days

Last night I read a poem that showed me in a flash why I save...

May 20, 2016

Poetry Friday: “In the Beginning Was the Word” by Jeanne Murray Walker

I can't begin to count the number of poems which offer their language to re-imagining...

May 13, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Middle Distance, Morning” by Margaret Gibson

I read this poem as a meditation on how one can relate to the outside...

May 06, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The Moss Method” by Pattiann Rogers

I've long loved Pattiann Rogers' poems: how they caress nature's most minute details with acutely...

April 2016

April 29, 2016

Poetry Friday: “When God Dreamed Eve through Adam” by Richard Chess

The Genesis story of the creation of Adam and Eve: poets for centuries have been...

April 15, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The Grackles” by Betsy Sholl

Here is a poem that silently enacts a conversion. The poem starts off with a...

April 13, 2016

Finding Another World in Winterkill

"There is another world, but it is in this one." —William Butler Yeats Reading Yeats's...

April 08, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Smokers, Sunday Morning, 1975” by Bobby C. Rogers

This poem seems at first to be a straight-forward narrative: a childhood recollection of the...

March 2016

March 22, 2016

Refugees Are People, Not a Crisis

Sometimes the horrors in the news are so overwhelming that I’m left speechless. This is...

March 11, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Meditation on the Evangelista” by Karen An-Hwei Lee

What if God turned up at your door in the form of a brush salesman?...

February 2016

February 29, 2016

Love Your Enemies for Lent

Another campaign season is upon us with a vengeance. Actually it's campaign seasons—since the U.S....

February 08, 2016

Why Art?

I'm propped in bed reading my current bedtime novel. Pausing to reflect on a particularly...

January 2016

January 18, 2016

Poetry as a Weapon of Jihad

“Strap on a suicide vest? Join a global mission whose leaders preach hatred and acts...

December 2015

December 21, 2015

Come, Lord Jesus

I've always loved Advent's "O" Antiphons. These are the prayers traditionally voiced during the final...