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Poetry Friday

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

November 2017

November 17, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Flying Letters”

I admire the way this poem speaks indirectly to the incomprehensible loss of military life...

November 10, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Camp Meeting”

We’re familiar with the genre called “historical fiction.” But in “Camp Meeting: Old Saybrook, Connecticut,...

November 03, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Speculation: Along the Way”

Did you ever try finding words for the experience of prayer? Or for the sense...

October 2017

October 27, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Notre Dame”

I love it when poems speak to each other and expand on a shared theme....

September 2017

September 29, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Underwhelmed”

Put on your hiking books and grab your compass, magnifying glass, and shovel: this poem...

September 22, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Cellar Door”

I love poems that stitch together memories from opposite ends of a lifetime, connecting them...

September 15, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Medieval Miniatures: Entry into Jerusalem”

Dan Murphy has written a series of poems inspired by medieval miniatures: those marvelously detailed...

September 08, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Russian Bell”

In this stirring poem by Anya Silver, the bell becomes a blueprint. First, the bell...

September 01, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Psalm of Your Face”

“Lord, let…”: this is how nearly every sentence of Nicholas Samaras’s “The Psalm of Your...

August 2017

August 25, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Love’s Alchemy”

The first thing I’m drawn in by in Margaret Rabb’s “Love’s Alchemy” is the lusciousness...

August 18, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Fire Tower”

This summer is marked by smoke, our town covered in an urgent haze from nearby...

August 04, 2017

Poetry Friday: “My Life as an Open-Air Temple”

In Dolin’s poem we wake up abruptly inside the walls of an ancient temple. Walls...

June 2017

June 30, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Fawn”

Narrative poetry has its special challenge: how does it differentiate itself from prose? David Mason’s...

June 23, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Japanese Wall Hanging”

I find myself reading this poem both literally and as a metaphor for our lives....

June 16, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Prayer”

I used to collect poems that are prayers, so Sharon Cumberland’s “Prayer” immediately leapt out...

June 02, 2017

Poetry Friday: “June Prayer”

How to pray for someone bent over by grief when nature is stretching upward in...

May 2017

May 26, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Key”

I love this poem for its exuberance. The fat bee, “big as a blackberry,” bumping...

May 19, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Spirit of Promise”

Memories can make good material for poetry. In “The Spirit of Promise,” Daniel Donaghy is...

May 12, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Rain”

The emotional landscape of motherhood can often be hard to describe and is underrepresented in...

May 05, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Aging Maria”

The prose poem is a challenging genre. After all, what distinguishes “plain prose” from “prose...

April 2017

April 28, 2017

Poetry Friday: “To Jenya on First Noticing the Dog’s Bowl of My Imagination”

I was first drawn to this poem by Carol Ann Davis because of its long...

April 21, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Sewing Box”

We don’t think enough—or at least I don’t—about how objects can contain memory. But Murray...

March 2017

March 31, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Exile with Fox” by Chelsea Wagenaar

This poem draws me in with its opening sounds: “Midnight, mid-May.” With those urgent, humming...

March 24, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Love’s Last” by Christian Wiman

The spring equinox was on Monday. I am slowly seeing a flush of new life...

March 17, 2017

Poetry Friday: “In Tandem”

Here is a poem that takes aim at our clichés about aging and death. It...

March 10, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Grief Daybook: A Love Supreme”

It’s fairly common for a poem to be inspired by (or be in conversation with)...

March 03, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Ghazal: Woman at the Well”

I’ve always found the ghazal form intriguing. Its couplets, all discrete, are linked by a phrase...

February 2017

February 24, 2017

Poetry Friday: “The Cartographer of Disaster”

Sometimes a poet will take a familiar story but re-tell it from the point of...

February 17, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Afternoon Swim”

The play of grammar has always lured me. I’ve wondered: why do English sentences take...

February 10, 2017

Poetry Friday: “Erasure”

Have you ever felt that your own existence is being called into question? That you...