I guess if I were to try to pin down my first explicitly political opinion, it’s got to be connected to the necessary separation of church and state, which has mostly disappeared these days if you’re part of the right church (i.e. a brand of religion favored by at least 5 sitting justices on the … Continue reading Reclamation Part 5
The River Remembers
by January Gill O'Neil from her book Glitter Road I remember an all-day field trip to the Honey Island Swamp. Canoes, sack lunches brought from home with soda cans wrapped in foil, their tops distended from too long in the freezer. We wore clothes we didn’t mind ruining just in case. Near the end of … Continue reading The River Remembers
Reclamation Part 4
This is the fourth installment about my multi-section poem responding to Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright." Here's a link to parts 1, 2 and 3. When I was young, the world felt impossibly small to me, but simultaneously too large to fathom. By young I mean the time when this poem takes place, so high … Continue reading Reclamation Part 4
Becoming Your Own God
"The God Who Loves You" by Carl Dennis In Genesis 2, God creates Adam and then tells him he’s free to eat from any tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for when you eat from it you will surely die.” I can’t remember how many different … Continue reading Becoming Your Own God
Reclamation Part 3
This is the third installment about my multi-section poem responding to Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright.” Here are links to parts 1 and 2. Slidell was a suburb when I lived there, a bedroom community. Most adults worked in New Orleans like my parents did. They drove the Twin Spans or Highway 11 across the … Continue reading Reclamation Part 3
Learning to Holiday
"The Cajun Night Before Christmas" by Trosclair If I do the math, I guess I've been celebrating Christmas now longer than I didn't, though I'm still not really comfortable with it. I was raised a Jehovah's Witness and didn't leave the church until I was 26 but those are the years when you learn how … Continue reading Learning to Holiday
Reclamation Part 2
This is the second installment about “Reclamation,” a response poem to Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright.” Part 1 is here. We moved around a lot when I was young—by the time I started second grade I’d been in four schools in two states—but when we got to Slidell, we stayed. We moved there in the … Continue reading Reclamation Part 2
Search for community, search for beauty
"Seraphim" by Patricia Spears Jones The last time I took a fiction workshop I wrote a not very fictional story about a person leaving the only church he’d ever known and trying to work through the loss that came with the decision. It wasn’t a good story, but also the audience (my classmates) mostly didn’t … Continue reading Search for community, search for beauty
Reclamation Part 1
The story of Robert Frost’s appearance at John F Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 goes something like this. Frost had endorsed Kennedy during his presidential run, and Kennedy had used an adapted form of the final stanza of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” as part of his stump speech. He reportedly would close it … Continue reading Reclamation Part 1
Sitting for a picture
from Unshuttered by Patricia Smith One of the first poems I ever published, way back when I was in high school, was about photographs. That might have been the title. I don’t exactly remember and fortunately for me, that poem has been lost to the passing of time. (Young people will never know how wonderful … Continue reading Sitting for a picture
