CURRENTS THROUGH USELESS BAY

Can I stay with this? Can I stay here, in my body, with this pain, with this grief so large I see only the inside of a whale’s belly? Feel it fully, rock myself in the night, sob with it, see it, tell it all the things a mother-loving God knows how to say….

When I started meditation practice, my blame-stories very slowly (and with quite a struggle) began to fall apart, as if written on ancient parchment that disintegrated as it was opened and became exposed.

My next workshop is on the subject of war. In creating this 10-week series, I’ve been contemplating the relationship between poetry and war, and also the reason why poetry is so therapeutic. Each time I encounter a poem, or listen to someone speak about poetry and its process, the relationship between poetry and [...]

Dear Alex:
I found this picture of you on your way to Kuwait on your sister’s Facebook account. I know I haven’t been much of a presence in your life, for reasons too complicated to go into here, but I’ve always thought about you during intermittent visits and as pictures came to me over the [...]

Emily Warn begins a poem in her most recent book with the line: “The trick? To live without survival kits:/miracles, bottled water, fire starters, spells…” I am unable to paraphrase this poem, but I can tell you how it impacts me. I’m left with a feeling, after contemplating her words for [...]

What is the structure of longing and belonging?
Some time ago I lived on Orcas Island off and on for about 4 or 5 years. I hadn’t been back to the island for 5 years, so for part of our vacation, my partner and I visited for a couple of days. Looking [...]

Ally in Mumbles

Originally uploaded by Phil Rose

This past weekend I attended a poetry workshop that featured the work of Pablo Neruda, only to discover my inner critic is still alive and well as I tried to read freshly written first draft poems to people I’d met that day! The workshop was led by Lorraine [...]

‘Emily Warn is one tough poet. . . . She not only takes on God but also juggles the hot coals of memory and wrestles her way to an honest spiritual life.’-The Seattle Times
To invent the alef-beit,
decipher the grammar of crows,
read a tangle of bare branches
with vowels of the last leaves
scrawling their jittery speech
on the [...]

“Most of what makes a life satisfying and resonant lies outside the sphere of our personal skills and powers. We have been conditioned to think that we shape our lives far more than we actually do, and this is why we are so dismayed and feel so helpless when something outside our plan, outside [...]

I’m driving around in the almost-snow, waiting to go home, giving my partner time with is daughter, time without me there. Driving through syllabled signs–Silent Cedars, Lone Lake, Irish Welding, Trees of Thiburon, I’m a little lost, finding my way through a place that is new to me. I don’t expect to find [...]