Tag Archives: poetry

‘Conjure an Exhale Instead’

Posted on December 26, 2024 by JMN

I never knew why my uncle, a panhandle Texan, liked to say “the only good thing ever come out of Oklahoma was an empty bus.” He should’ve met Steve Leyva, who comes out of Oklahoma and is a good thing. … Continue reading →

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Three from ‘Twenty Years of Letras Latinas’

Posted on December 20, 2024 by JMN

The planet is bursting with verse. A reader of poetry has to be arbitrary to stay afloat. In this post I’ve done something impudent, which is to apply strikeout formatting to text which I think would have been better omitted. … Continue reading →

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Sketch-Read: Patrick Dundon

Posted on December 14, 2024 by JMN

See ifYou canFind thePoem’sTriggerPull it (JMN) Patrick Dundon’s “Gratitude” says this: […] Sure my mother did not hold me enough,too tempted by the specter of satiety only alcohol can bring. It’s a piece of important nonsense; a specter is terrifying, … Continue reading →

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‘A Wall to Lean on & Get Your Fiend On’

Posted on November 30, 2024 by JMN

I’ve been reading old nursery rhymes I was exposed to in tinyhood by a teenaged aunt and twenty-year-old mother. They must have enthralled me as I lay me down to sleep in the pre-reason season; they still do. Why? Obscenely … Continue reading →

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‘I Aimed for English Renderings That Could Stand on Their Own’

Posted on November 27, 2024 by JMN

It’s a handsome volume* with gloriously voweled Arabic texts opposite English versions by James E. Montgomery, Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall. The poems are by, and attributed to, Abū … Continue reading →

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Homelessness in the Homeland: The Nursery View

Posted on November 21, 2024 by JMN

There was an old womanLived under a hill;And if she’s not gone,She lives there still. (From In the Nursery of My Book House, ed. by Olive Beaupré Miller, 1937) (c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?

Posted on November 9, 2024 by JMN

“If all men are born free, how is it that women are born slaves?” (Mary Astell (1666-1731) The question of Adam’s and Eve’s navels has been discussed by theologians. It’s interesting, some have thought, for how it bears on the … Continue reading →

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‘The Gravity of Curiosity’

Posted on October 31, 2024 by JMN

… The gravity of curiosity. Our lives should be lived in interrogatives rather than imperatives. It’s more magnanimous to move through the world with wonder than with unearned certainty… [Poems] encourage us to ask the complicated questions, both of ourselves … Continue reading →

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Ankle Bells Aquiver

Posted on October 9, 2024 by JMN

Economy and directness are said to be paramount traits of poetry. “Directness” does heavy lifting in that statement. The poem by Alafia Nicole Sessions titled “Immature Animals” (Poetry, October 2024) stumps, like something glimpsed that you can’t identify, but so … Continue reading →

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‘His Lesions Are Legion…’

Posted on October 5, 2024 by JMN

In a single poem Gwendolyn Brooks wraps up in a big bow the harrowing, goofy joy, the confused exultation salted with brow-knitting angst, that enters into raising yourself with children. “Life for my child is simple, and is good” is … Continue reading →

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