I visited Zuccotti Park while in NYC a month or so ago while it was still Occupied and alive with a jumpy confidence. It was late in the evening and I'd come down from the West Village with an old friend, head of an arts organization in the city. As...

I wish I had time to review the list of new books before me -- here are just three. I hope to keep up with more "roundup" reviews in the future.

Deborah Landau's second book, The Last Usable Hour (Copper Canyon) is as hypnotic as the change...

In the ongoing wide and choppy wake of the op-ed analysis of the president's failures in the New York Times August 7th -- here is one more response, below, from my friend Mary Yeager, Professor of economic history at UCLA. While I personally don't find psychoanalyzing of politicians...

Well, that got your attention. Thomas Jefferson's life, loves, and antipathies seem relevant at this moment in history (as at others, like the founding of the republic) -- and I feel obliged to note that the "headline" above is true and refers to a time in 1808 when Jefferson learned...

Bob Holman, my friend, fellow poet and co-editor of Crossing State Lines: An American Renga is in Kathmandu. It is not at all unusual for Bob to turn up in exotic locations -- he spends a bit of his time documenting and recording "disappearing" languages for his ongoing study of...

Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, I had a good friend in grade school and high school named Mary Dennise ("Dennie") McCollom -- who is my friend to this day. As children, we were told that Dennie's father was dead, that he had died in World War II, that her...

Women on college campuses are tired. They are tired of seeing that Same Old Enormity dressed up in its frat tie and colors, communicating in secret code re women as objects of ridicule and sexual predation. "An investigation has been launched" and "We hear your voice" -- has an insulting...

Read and weep or laugh, shake your head -- but be warned. If you dismiss this frat email as a joke or more of the "acceptable" "just being guys" open season on women -- you are missing that drone in the sky. We remain so inured to this kind of...

Bill Maher is a hero of mine. He is brilliant, wildly funny, politically astute, a living antidote to media-speak and partisan yammering. But last Friday night on Real Time, Bill Maher missed the Real Point. It's the misogyny, stupid.

This point was made by Tavis Smiley, in response...

On Jan. 19th, the New York Times ran a national feature entitled "Shooting in Arizona" -- a speculative piece on why Jared L. Loughner's mental deterioration wasn't "caught" prior to his shooting spree. The article was just one more in a series of soul-searchers in the press, part of a...

Here is a Thanksgiving cornucopia of significant new books of poetry -- each one worthy of our attention as it spins out a new and challenging perspective. Again, these are endorsements -- not complete reviews -- though each book here deserves a full critical examination and inquiry.

...

"To a Soldier" and text as posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education Arts & Academe page. To view this article on that site, click here.

To a Soldier

Imagine it: a world away, Autumn.
Leaves scattering but not in fiery
Effusion, like...

Co-written by Cate Marvin and Carol Muske-Dukes (Cate Marvin - Poet and Assoc. Prof., College of Staten Island and Co-Director, VIDA)

The recent attention given to what can only be described as an outburst by two very talented lady writers, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner respectively, with regard to the...

W.H. Auden, in his wonderful book of essays, The Dyer's Hand, imagined a "College for Bards", a cheerfully eccentric institution offering a refreshing take on what is deemed necessary to educate a poet.

Poets "matriculating" at this Bardic College, would find that curriculum requirements included raising and caring...

The catalogue for the haunting "Other as Animal" show at Danese Gallery in New York City (which runs from June 4 through August 6th ) -- offers a quote from the naturalist writer, Henry Beston, about the "other" that animals are to us. "They are not brethren, they are not...

Poetry's true subject remains words themselves and their delights and vagaries, which is why I want to mention, before considering the books of poems at hand, a nonfiction book with a title that opens a poetic door into what we'd classify as creative nonfiction -- a book that is true...

I'm taking a moment to bring you a statement of urgent import from an environmental activist, protector of international ocean wildlife - who is making a profound plea to the Obama administration to reverse its cynical and cruel support of the lifting of the ban on commercial whaling -- a...

The views (and poetry) published here are those of Lt. Col. Edward Ledford -- they do not reflect the policies of the U.S. Army or NATO.

This is the third in a series of exchanges between "Soldier & Poet" in discussion of "War Poems" and their relevance to contemporary wars...

Dear readers,

I apologize for the long lapse between the second installment of On the Trail of the White Rabbit and this final note, by no means a conclusion, but a valedictory wave down the rabbit hole, a complicated farewell.

In the earlier installments, (On the Trail of...

HAPPY LATE VALENTINE'S DAY and thank you to all those who participated in the nomination process to find The Nine - women chosen by other women as candidates for an international governing body. A chance for a new approach - since what we've seen so far isn't working.

You cast...