January 2015 – Alison McGhee

January 31, 2015

Poem of the Week, by Saeed Jones

I don’t know exactly what it is about this poem that haunts me, but I keep coming back to it. It might be a bunch of things – the Skoal-tin ring in the back pocket and the work-calloused hands that make me think of a lot of boys I grew up with, the fact that … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Saeed Jones

January 24, 2015

Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness” seared itself into my brain the first time I read it. She’s another of those poets to me, one whose name I google to see if she’s got another poem out there, one that I haven’t ever read before, let alone memorized. This particular poem makes me feel as if … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

January 20, 2015

Four Sentences from the Road

On Day One she pointed the car south and drove through the frozen tundra of Minnesota, the barren cornfields of Iowa and the vaguely southernish-feeling byways of Missouri until she reached a place where the highway rest stop could be broached without the aid of mittens, hat or parka, and that land was called Kansas, … Continue reading Four Sentences from the Road

January 18, 2015

Poem of the Week, by Ellen Bass

Some poets are so precious to me that sometimes, late at night usually, I start googling their names. Maybe they’ve got a new poem out there, one I haven’t yet seen, one that will instantly burn itself into my heart the way this one below did. It came to me by random chance –the Sun … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Ellen Bass

January 10, 2015

Poem of the Week, by Lianne Spidel

When I was little I read a novel called “A Lantern in Her Hand,” by Bess Streeter Aldrich. It was about a pioneer woman, surprise surprise (you wouldn’t think that there could be all that many pioneer woman books, but take it from me, there are) who homesteaded on the plains. The husband in that … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Lianne Spidel

January 3, 2015

Poem of the Week, by Jacqueline Osherow

When I first saw this poem I almost didn’t read it due to its extreme length. (One of my friends has a “will not pay to watch” actors list; my semi-equivalent is the “super-long or too-freaky-looking-or-full-of-itself-in-my-instant-opinion poems list.) But the first stanza sucked me in with its reference to memory, and walls alive with light, … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Jacqueline Osherow