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poetry

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January 2014

January 16, 2014

Pleasure Milker

Guest post by Jen Hinst-White The mind is always elsewhere, won’t stay put. Whose merciful...

January 03, 2014

A Baby and a Book Burning

I’ve always wanted to have class by the fireplace, she said. Great, let’s do that....

November 2013

November 13, 2013

I Don’t Have Time

In our current Western culture, we think we have control of time. With our watches...

October 2013

October 08, 2013

When a Friend Dies

I received this group email not long ago: Our beloved Beth has passed away. We...

October 07, 2013

Seamus Heaney: Poet of Holy Saturday

Guest Post by Conor McDonough The late, great Seamus Heaney understood the sadness of the...

July 2013

July 24, 2013

The Poetry of Self-Absorbed Young Love

Until I was thirty-two, I was afraid to think about God. I panicked at what...

July 17, 2013

Living on the Threshold

Guest Post By Elizabeth Kalman My house sits on the edge of a salt marsh...

June 2013

June 10, 2013

Wiman and Words

At “Good Letters,” words are what we work with. Of course, this is true of...

May 2013

May 20, 2013

Why We Make Art

“Who you actually are is far bigger than the narrative you construct about who you...

May 03, 2013

Beautiful Loser: Poetry at the Mall

Guest Post By Daniel Bowman Jr. Pray for one good humiliation every day. –Richard Rohr...

April 2013

April 29, 2013

Partaking and Passing On: The Work of Luci Shaw

The world is not with us—enough. O taste and see. –Denise Levertov, “Taste and See”...

April 26, 2013

Luci Shaw’s Poetry of Hope and Humility

The pale bits—twigs, fibers, pine needles—sun struck, fall through the lazy air as if yearning...

April 08, 2013

More Poetry of Married Love

In a previous post, I used Richard Wilbur’s poem “for C” to talk about my...

March 2013

March 18, 2013

Auden’s Love of Neighbor

This is my one hundredth post for Good Letters. What a privilege it has been...

February 2013

February 26, 2013

The Poverty of Language

Another exercise. This one an exercise in seeing deeply, visualization, sketching from memory, and composing...

February 05, 2013

The Value of What I Teach

“Inch your way through dead dreams to another land.” —“Box of Rain,” Robert Hunter, lyrics;...

December 2012

December 18, 2012

The Poetry of Married Love

When my husband was told he’d have quadruple bypass surgery the next day, we were—believe...

November 2012

November 06, 2012

Denise Levertov: A Poet’s Life, Part Two

Yesterday, in Part One of my review of the major new biography, Denise Levertov: A Poet’s...

October 2012

October 25, 2012

Something Like Jasmine Meditates on Mortality

Living with leukemia, I naturally meditate often on our human mortality. No, often is the...

September 2012

September 12, 2012

Imago Dei

What does it mean to write poems in the Christian tradition? Creative writing teachers at...

September 06, 2012

Poetry as Balance Beam

Because I don’t currently have a television, I wasn’t able to catch much of this...

August 2012

August 06, 2012

Varieties of Quiet: Christian Wiman’s Pensées

So profound are Christian Wiman’s pensées in the current issue of Image that I feel...

June 2012

June 26, 2012

Why All This Music?

Guest Post I grew up in the Mohawk River valley of upstate New York. By...

June 19, 2012

Still Life

I walk to the kitchen cupboard to take out plates for dinner, and the corner...