The following is a conversation between an officer in the United States Army stationed in Afghanistan and a citizen of the United States. A conversation between a soldier, Lt. Colonel Edward Ledford -- and a poet, Carol Muske-Dukes. The Huffington Post has generously provided a forum for this timely exchange...

The three books reviewed here are by women writers who confront the world in uncompromised fashion. The first poet here is the late Reetika Vazirani and she is the most difficult to write about, not only because the poems are posthumous, and assembled and edited by editor/friends, (Leslie McGrath &...

Style comes with maturity for most writers. Here is a poet at the unmistakable peak of her expressive power and experience -- Louise Gluck, with her new book, A Village Life. But here also is the late Jason Shinder, a poet who died not long ago, at a relatively young...

I had intended in this, the second installment of a series, to follow the pale hare to the testing labs and trial centers for a disease we designate a "national epidemic" in the U.S.: diabetes. However, since my earlier posting on the question of animal testing, I have received many...

High noon at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party we call a Health Care Debate in this country -- some of us look up occasionally and wonder how we plummeted down this rabbit hole? Yet the lunatic debate in the bunny dugout has no beginning, middle or end. (This Mad Hatter's...

Iran is off the media radar, instead we are caught up in another purely American sense of tragedy -- the deaths of celebrities -- the recent loss of Farrah Fawcett followed by the one dwarfing hers and nearly all others -- Michael Jackson.

I had the most tangential connections --...

We all imagine that when die, our dear and familiar bodies will be treated with respect -- even as our flesh suits are readied for the earth or the flames. But let's just say that if you or a loved one just happen to die somewhere in the U.S. but...

With the triumphant reappearance of the love-rock musical HAIR on Broadway - (after last summer's revival in Central Park) - I'm adding my own "French Twist" on the production - and a production past - in Paris!

Sometime in the summer of 1970, I left the...

Read Carol's latest poem, "Addicts," at: http://www.slate.com/id/2212693/

You can download the audio of Carol Muske-Dukes reading this poem by clicking here.

As we grow more bold about using "the D-word", our collective memory (and many haunting images) takes us back to The Great Depression of the 1930's. Here is a "family album" moment of my own, beginning in the great metropolis, traveling to a tiny town in North Dakota called Wyndmere...

"Even before a gunman killed five people and injured several others... at North Illinois University, a small but growing movement had been underway at universities and state legislatures, to allow students, faculty and staff to carry guns on campus." -- USA Today, Feb. 15, 2008

I...

A couple of months ago, I received a call from the Governor's office, informing me that I had been appointed California Poet Laureate. Soon after, I was invited to write a brief essay for the Los Angeles Times about my appointment. I mused a bit about how this poetic "office",...