Poet • Educator
Poetry helps me find “the place beyond words.” We poets use words to point ourself and others toward those ineffable places. When this water of 'being' is running through me, I write for the joy of participating and the hope of learning something new. If my words then touch others I am rewarded a second time.
A book review is a gift from the reviewer to the reader and writer. It is a conversation in which the writer is allowed into someone else’s perceptions of their words and it is a way for potential readers to learn about a book they might want to read. It is also a labor of kindness since very few reviewers get paid for their work.
I am grateful to both Claudia Putnam whose review of my book appears in MER online (aka Mom Egg Review) and to Risa Deneberg for her words in River Mouth Review.
The Ekphrastic Review publishes a weekly visual prompt as a way to elicit literary responses. Thank you to them for publishing mine along with many others. It is in response to Rubens The Massacre of the Innocents.
Innocence Aftermath
Nothing new here.
Hasn’t it always been so,
this othering? Desire
to rid ourselves from threat
to the kingdom of self.
Murderers might be armored
with righteous fervor
or crowned with orders to obey.
Perhaps untethered voices
scramble one’s mind and a rapacious
quest to still them. Some baked-in-trait,
trick or taint in our genes
commandeers our heads. Centuries
of bloodshed. Blood as dictator
and treasure. More valued
than gold. Yet, it’s the naked
violence against children,
slaughter of the defenseless
we seem unable to quell. We are sick.
Of it all. Aren’t we?
My book is available from the following bookstores. Please shop local if possible or order online from an independent bookstore:
Eagle Harbor Books–June 30, 2022–7 pm–in person. Please register for the reading at Eagle Harbor Books.
Langley Library, Langley, WA–Friday, July 8th–6:30 pm ( with Julia Levine authors of Ordinary Psalms)
It’s About Time Reading Series–Thursday, July 14th–6 pm (online–register through Seattle Public Library events page)
Elliott Bay Bookstore–Thursday, Sept. 8th–7 pm (with Cindy Veach, author of Her Kind)–in person
Hugo House–Wednesday, November 9th–7 pm (in conversation & reading with Kristen Millares Young)–in person
MoonPath Press reading with Alice Derry–Sunday, November 13th @ 3 pm Pacific–online
I somehow missed this shout out about some of my work by TAB journal in March. The Body Lives Its Undoing, a book of poems (by me) and visual art by others, is still available. All proceeds go to The Benaroya Research Institute.
