Category: THE POWER OF POETRY

POWER OF POETRY #128: JANE ROSENBERG LAFORGE

POWER OF POETRY #128: JANE ROSENBERG LAFORGE

Our classmates were the children of rock stars, writers, critics,visual artists, film editors and movie executives. But everyone in the neighborhood seemed famous to us, just for having been there.

POWER OF POETRY #127: ANNE FRICKE

POWER OF POETRY #127: ANNE FRICKE

Sometimes the moments are tense, and the uncomfortable stretching and growing of the audience are palpable. Other times, the open-hearted connections embrace the poet with unshakable support.

POWER OF POETRY #125: THE POWER & RISE OF UNDERGROUND VOICES – Mbizo CHIRASHA

POWER OF POETRY #125: THE POWER & RISE OF UNDERGROUND VOICES – Mbizo CHIRASHA

“From the time of our birthing to these days of maturation, we are all shaped, serenaded and entertained by sweet ancient lullabies, drum beat throbs and early morning birdsongs.”

POWER OF POETRY #124: GOODNESS OLANREWAJU AYOOLA

POWER OF POETRY #124: GOODNESS OLANREWAJU AYOOLA

You see poetry in everything: in nuances, in branches swaying in the gentle breeze, in the laughter of children, in the mirror, in the rustling of leaves, in the taxi, in the news, in the sermon….

@GoodnessLanre

POWER OF POETRY #123: RAY MWIHAKI

POWER OF POETRY #123: RAY MWIHAKI

I’m the kind of person who bottles things up till they froth and bubble with the wrath of an erupting volcano yet …I realize more pain has been lived by those brave ones who choose to share their lives with us through art.

POWER OF POETRY #122: CATHRYN McCARTHY

POWER OF POETRY #122: CATHRYN McCARTHY

Poetry distils the voice to its very essence; if you have nothing to say, poetry betrays that instantly. – ‪@katysue1828‬

POWER OF POETRY #121: MACKENZIE MOORE

POWER OF POETRY #121: MACKENZIE MOORE

I never had a revelation that completely hoodwinked me into poetry — my parents were more Bob Dylan than Anne Bradstreet.

‪@mxkmoore‬

POWER OF POETRY #120: NISHA BHAKOO

POWER OF POETRY #120: NISHA BHAKOO
What will Nisha Bhakoo, author of “You found a beating heart” (The Onslaught Press, 2016) and “Black & White Dream (@brokensleep, 2018), include in today’s #TPQ5? Find out inside!
@nishabhakoo

POWER OF POETRY #119: CHRISTOPHER W. CLARK

POWER OF POETRY #119: CHRISTOPHER W. CLARK

Allowing yourself to become absorbed by the poem means you lose a part of yourself too, creating a small fracture. We might think of this as another gap being created, allowing for the new potential of ideas to be explored. This is the joy of poetry—for writer and reader.

POWER OF POETRY #118: MIRIAM E. MILES

Despite my attempts to have a ‘legitimate’ kind of work-life, this was not going to happen, and my Swiss-cheese work history led me back to the pen yet again.

POWER OF POETRY #117: NOREEN OCAMPO

POWER OF POETRY #117: NOREEN OCAMPO

Staying silent for two years made everything build up and burst, and it turned out that poetry was still my favorite way to make peace, understand, and remember.


POWER OF POETRY #116: LUBOMIRA KOURTEVA

POWER OF POETRY #116: LUBOMIRA KOURTEVA

We were never meant to know it all anyway – and learning to feel comfortable in the unknowingness is a humility to be treasured. This is something that poetry teaches us very well….

POWER OF POETRY #115: SHULY XÓCHITL CAWOOD

POWER OF POETRY #115: SHULY XÓCHITL CAWOOD

The best poems ask us to think twice about something. They ask us to see a moment in a different light. The poem, for me, is about how difficult it can be to figure out who we are and what we want…. – ‪@shulycawood‬

POWER OF POETRY #114: SAMANTHA MOYA

POWER OF POETRY #114: SAMANTHA MOYA

In short, the power of poetry in my life has been many things – a literary exercise, an expression of empathy, an exorcism.

POWER OF POETRY #112: MARK MAYES

POWER OF POETRY #112: MARK MAYES

“[Poetry] came via a late-teens desire to be an actor. And in the speech and drama classes I had with a nice lady called Vivienne….”

POWER OF POETRY #111: PAUL ROBERT MULLEN

POWER OF POETRY #105: PAUL ROBERT MULLEN

“Poetry has always gripped me because it is an unquantifiable mystery that holds no more answers than it does questions.”

POWER OF POETRY #110: HALI CROSS

POWER OF POETRY #110: HALI CROSS

Many a poem attempts to say—and she loved him. However, whatever the poet could write about love, it also isn’t. This is why there will never be enough love poems.

Power of Poetry #109: CLIFFORD BROOKS

Power of Poetry #109: CLIFFORD BROOKS

“Poetry captures sparrows, children playing, elderly couples holding hands, the reflection in shop windows….”

POWER OF POETRY #108: ERIK FUHRER

POWER OF POETRY #108: ERIK FUHRER

Love tulips differently in a time of precarity, and love often leaves some something behind.

POWER OF POETRY #104: MARTHA WARREN

POWER OF POETRY #104: MARTHA WARREN

“But instead of giving up, I think of this: My most successful poem ever, in my opinion, was so because it provided comfort.”

POWER OF POETRY #103: DEONTE OSAYANDE

POWER OF POETRY #103: DEONTE OSAYANDE

“We need the beauty of language to do more than just communicate entertainment.”

POWER OF POETRY #102: KAYLEIGH CAMPBELL

“Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” — Sylvia Plath Poetry has always, and will continue doing I hope, held a special potency. In what are often very short

POWER OF POETRY #101: CHRISTOPHER MIGUEL FLAKUS

POWER OF POETRY #101: CHRISTOPHER MIGUEL FLAKUS

“Through poetry we can reduce the mythic to the mundane and elevate the ordinary to the sublime. We can understand ourselves, and each other, in a deeply necessary and fundamental way.”

POWER OF POETRY #100: BRIAN S. ELLIS

POWER OF POETRY #100: BRIAN S. ELLIS

“These poems are seeds that will one day grow into religions, cultures, planets, multiverses. Snowballs that become avalanches.”

POWER OF POETRY #99: MATÉ JARAI

POWER OF POETRY #99: MATÉ JARAI

“Poetry is confession for the Godless. If my mind is a fury, if I can’t make sense of my own feelings, I scribble or I type, and whatever comes out, ‘quality’ doesn’t matter, it’s real and it’s there.”

POWER OF POETRY #98: SK GROUT

POWER OF POETRY #98: SK GROUT

“It seems I cannot escape poetry, even if the thought fleetingly crosses my mind.”

POWER OF POETRY #97: CASEY BOTTONO

POWER OF POETRY #97: CASEY BOTTONO

My truth rarely comes to the page easily, but it is always worth the work. Abandoning ‘perfection’ has brought me to a point where I can be utterly honest. 

POWER OF POETRY #95: AMY SHIMSHON-SANTO

POWER OF POETRY #95: AMY SHIMSHON-SANTO

Aging has meant gaining and losing things. Two stolen bikes. Careers. Partners. A parent. Poetry never left. It shows no sign of weariness. It is eager and ready.

POWER OF POETRY #94: JESSICA DRAKE-THOMAS

POWER OF POETRY #94: JESSICA DRAKE-THOMAS

Poetry is far from dead or dying any time soon. Like all art forms, poetry adapts. It will endure, so long as poets exist to write it.

POWER OF POETRY #93: TRAVIS CRAVEY

POWER OF POETRY #93: TRAVIS CRAVEY:

These are human passions, after all, more than lust or greed or God: we want to connect.

POWER OF POETRY #92: TONY BROWN

I present as White, but I am of mixed race heritage. My mom is Italian-American, my father Mescalero Apache. I grew up hearing at home that I was never to think of myself as White, yet no one would ever see me as anything else.

POWER OF POETRY #90: JDG

Poetry moves. It’s transformative, and that transformation can be a catalyst for what we choose to make of ourselves, our stories, and our passions. Poetry is a place we can learn about others and ourselves.

POWER OF POETRY #89: A. A. PARR

I wrote for the joy of it, I wrote to make my mark on the world, I wrote because it bled out of me so quickly dropping it onto paper was the only responsible act I felt I could make.

POWER OF POETRY #88: ESTEBAN RODRIGUEZ

I turned to poetry to calm my encroaching anxiety, and I’ve turned to it since as a way to remind myself that I am a part of this world, that I exist within all the good and bad that it presents every day.

POWER OF POETRY #87: AMEE NASSERENE BROUMAND

POWER OF POETRY #87: AMEE NASSRENE BROUMAND
To attempt to tell all the truth—the kind of truth that slumbers at noon and wakes at midnight—requires slantness. Slantness is the language of night. Slantness is a gap in the facade of mundanity, a way for reality in all of its mystery to seep through the boundaries of language.

POWER OF POETRY #86: THOMAS STEWART

POWER OF POETRY #88: THOMAS STEWART

A word can muster a thousand thoughts. A poem can create a universe.

POWER OF POETRY #85: WILL SCHMIT

POWER OF POETRY #85: WILL SCHMIT

The poem is an artifact. Art as fact in the face a world determined to ignore the contemplative plaintiff. To hold the pen lightly enough to allow perspective to shift is to be attentive to the ghosts of chance, challenge, and chagrin.

POWER OF POETRY #84: BARTON SMOCK

POWER OF POETRY #84: BARTON SMOCK

You can’t catch a fish with the shadow of a bird. But you tried, right? You tried in that poem your friend wrote, the one where a stone ate a star. And is maybe still eating.

POWER OF POETRY #83: KARI FLICKINGER

POWER OF POETRY #83: KARI FLICKINGER

Poetry has turned me into a piece of broken technology, searching the horizon for symbols. It has estranged me from everyone I once loved, from every notion I ever thought to belong to.

POWER OF POETRY #82: MDSHall

POWER OF POETRY #82: MDSHall

We are soothsayers and truthsayers; warriors armed with words to be placed into action; protectors of the Univearth in search of the multiverse…

POWER OF POETRY #81: LAUREN BRAZEAL

POWER OF POETRY #80: LAUREN BRAZEAL

Her words pressed onto my consciousness with the immediacy of a blade to the throat, “It is not your right to feel powerless. Better people than you were powerless.”

THE POWER OF POETRY #80: STEPHEN FURLONG

THE POWER OF POETRY #80: STEPHEN FURLONG

He only stopped when he recognized his shoe was untied. He held such reverence for the laces and he asked us how we tied our shoes.

POWER OF POETRY #79: VENUS DAVIS

POWER OF POETRY #79: VENUS DAVIS

I knew that writing wasn’t about being the best – it’s about expressing yourself and being happy with what you’ve written. It’s not a chance for validation.

POWER OF POETRY #78: G.E. SCHWARTZ

POWER OF POETRY #77: G.E. SCHWARTZ

And with that light poetry has the power to usher us into a brave new world, filling our senses with the energy of creation where every bird, tree, branch, and blossom vibrates as if by immance.

POWER OF POETRY #77: CHRISTINA CIUFO

POWER OF POETRY #77: CHRISTINA CIUFO

Each poetic word, each lyrical line, each tone evoked and each enchanting rhyme within a poem ignites the orange-golden flames within the recesses of our minds and flickers its’ illuminating light behind our eyes.

POWER OF POETRY #76: TAMARA BURROSS GRISANTI

POWER OF POETRY #76: TAMARA BURROSS GRISANTI

Entering that space of creation is the only type of churchgoing that has ever spoken to me. It is paying tribute to what I know of the sacred, it is the only way I know how to be prayerful.

POWER OF POETRY #74: URNA BOSE

POWER OF POETRY #74: URNA BOSE

One can’t quite put a firm, decisive finger on when, where and how poetry collides, mingles, smudges and spills over into our lives

POWER OF POETRY #73: JOSEPH RATHGEBER

POWER OF POETRY #73: JOSEPH RATHGEBER

Poets excise words, omit and elide them. They break lines. Might as well break pane-glass windows.

POWER OF POETRY #72: MATT NAGIN

POWER OF POETRY #72: MATT NAGIN

Poetry cuts through the bullshit. It declutters spiritually. It is an opportunity to dance, to experiment, to hone new answers to complex problems.

POWER OF POETRY #72: NOAH C. LEKAS

POWER OF POETRY #72: NOAH C. LEKAS

I wanted unrestrained access to the divine and I wanted to never have to ask permission or apologize for my ambition.

POWER OF POETRY #70: KASHIANA SINGH

POWER OF POETRY #70: KASHIANA SINGH

Poetry was the heirloom; I took along with me as I walked into a marriage arranged by my parents.

POWER OF POETRY #69: KIRBY

Omg. In my lifetime, moms were actually accused and hated, disabused themselves, for “making their sons homos.”

POWER OF POETRY #68: ALEXUS ERIN

Poems can express themselves as fixed and as plastic, as grounded in space and liminal, heterotopic. They can be lively and spectral- palms kissing at the intersection of here and every elsewhere imaginable.

POWER OF POETRY #67: GIVING VOICE – CHRISTINE BRANDEL

POWER OF POETRY #66: GIVING VOICE – CHRISTINE BRANDEL

“When I was growing up, the term for people who didn’t talk was dumb.”

POWER OF POETRY #66: CATHERINE GARBINSKY

I mean that “The Journey” by Mary Oliver changed the way that I thought about my own voice and value. Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” brought me back to the world…

POWER OF POETRY #65: INK

And sharing is hard; poetry has an awful stigma due to academia’s institutional stranglehold on the concept. Thankfully, however, poetry will always be of, by, and for the people.

POWER OF POETRY #63: DANIEL GUSTAFSSON

Poetry doesn’t give me the power, doesn’t licence me, to say whatever I want in whichever way I choose. It rather forces me to attend to the potentials of language and to generate meanings beyond my private prerogatives.

POWER OF POETRY #62: ERNESTO CEPEDA

This is when I realized that I needed to stop running from my fate and fear of failure and face the destiny of stanza, rhymes and climaxes waiting to be crafted before me.

POWER OF POETRY #61: AMANDA EARL

Once I divested myself of my image of a poet with a capital P, as an old dead white man from the early 20th century or earlier who had intoned poems in an English accent whilst stroking his sizeable beard, my whole world opened up.

POWER OF POETRY #60: ALICIA REBECCA MYERS

It’s clear to me now that poetry isn’t just a way for me to locate meaning in experience but is the very organizing principle behind my thinking. Because I can’t visualize in my mind, I conjure through language.

POWER OF POETRY #59: SARAH CAREY

If there’s one thing that probably rings truest for me among all the things I could say about the power of poetry, it would be that poetry has the capacity to make us better people.

POWER OF POETRY #58: JOHN LAWRENCE

Maybe, sometimes, it’s because a particular poem needs revisiting more than once to understand what it’s trying to say. Or maybe it’s because the power of a poem is beyond the actual words, and needs time to discover.

POWER OF POETRY #55: FRANCOISE CHOUINARD

In poetry, you find the life stories of each of us and as a reader, you interpret each poem in your own way, despite the real meaning behind the poem or regardless of the reasons why the writer wrote it.

POWER OF POETRY #54: BILL DENHAM

“….the act of creating, of writing or of speaking a poem into existence, is an act of discovery, of discovery of meaning, an act of self-discovery—who I am at this given moment in time?

POWER OF POETRY #53: CHRISTINA SPRINGER

“We Blacks in space are Hoovers.
Who gonna be cryin’ in the 23rd century? / Not this hole’s grand grands. We define / the light until we all done letting stars be bright / ‘N suck up all the credit for nothing / they do ‘cept sit there burning.”

POWER OF POETRY: #52 ELISABETH HORAN

I can’t go to work and say to a colleague: I stay up late at night imagining animals being hit in the road over and over…

POWER OF POETRY #51: “FORM/MEANING” – VINCENT PERRONE

At this moment I’m typing in my apartment. A dog barks from a neighbor’s yard. A petal drops from the vase of wildflowers on my desk. And still I am in my parents basement playing with an eight-track recorder.

POWER OF POETRY #50: MICHAEL PRIHODA

In this way I am an outfielder, mobilized on the balls of his feet, crouched, glove hand and free hand never far apart, poised for the seed of poetry to head my way following the sharp crack of wood at the plate.

POWER OF POETRY #49: MICHAEL GARRIGAN

Poetry has spread itself thick throughout my life much like this mint. I’ll write a line, put it in my pocket, roll it around a bit, and then hours or days or months later, it’ll have rooted itself and grown into something.

POWER OF POETRY #48: BECKY VARLEY-WINTER

The landscape intensified into a fever dream of hail and sun, deep woods, shadows on the sea and boomeranging, shrieking swifts in the sky. I was watching Six Feet Under…[and] listening to PJ Harvey.

POWER OF POETRY #47: CHELSEA DINGMAN

Today, writing this in a parking lot while my son gets ready for a hockey game, I have the word “miracle” stuck in my throat. But, poetry is not the miracle. Life is. And poetry has allowed me to embrace that.

POWER OF POETRY #46: rob mclennan

For me, writing evolved into a way to better comprehend, articulate and even reshape the world. Now the work that excites me is writing that is exploratory

POWER OF POETRY #45: BOLA OPALEKE

It is how both can have their salvations split in two in a single process. I think it was Jericho Brown that said: “Poetry has its own language”. Nothing can be truer in my opinion.

POWER OF POETRY #44: GREG GERDING, EiC OF UNIVERSITY OF HELL PRESS

The whole time, I thought I was alone. But there were people just as pained and confused as I was. I found my community. I found my church. I kept returning every Sunday, sharing work I had written during the week.

POWER OF POETRY #43: SUE BURGE

Yes, I’m a poet and proud of it, and I don’t think I’ll ever want to be anything else. It’s what I would have said in answer to that old chestnut, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Wow! How many people actually get to have their dreams come true?

POWER OF POETRY #42: ELFIE

Some poems will remain within the confines of the therapist’s office. Some poems will never be known to anyone other than myself. Some poems I share with the world.

POWER OF POETRY #41: BETH GORDON

The power of poetry, then, is its ability to show us ordinary things in an extraordinary light.

POWER OF POETRY #40: “THE MEMORY OF TRADITION” ANGELA GABRIELLE FABUNAN

I believe the intensity of a poem, the dense nature of a line, the possibilities of syntax, and all aspects that make up a poem work together to become a fitting medium for tragedy.

POWER OF POETRY #39: JOSEPH HAEGER

I don’t only want people to be entertained, but also for them to feel something. And the fastest way to do that is through poetry; you are framing a feeling and passing it on, even if it’s only for a brief moment.

POWER OF POETRY #38: “HIDE & SEEK OF HOLES” – KRISTIN GARTH

Poetry is the real game of exposure. Really great poetry shows holes, the smallness, the seeking. We seek a connection to others that comes often from exposing moments on a page that you might be most embarrassed to put down on paper.

POWER OF POETRY #37: RAN WALKER

If done well, a poem can be far more powerful than a photograph, because you are capturing not just the image, but the emotional context and resonance of that thing.

POWER OF POETRY #36: Hasan Namir

I saw poetry as much more complex and rewarding than I had originally thought it would be over the years. Poetry is the one form that can take the readers to another level of meaning and power.

POWER OF POETRY #35: “Dreams/Facts” – Matthew Mayfield

POWER OF POETRY #35: “Facts/Dreams” – Matthew Mayfield: “….I strive to be that ONE person who keeps you closer to Life and
one step away from the trigger.”

POWER OF POETRY #34: “Some Slightly Connected Thoughts on Crafted Vulnerability, Stage Fright, Beauty, and Gratitude” – STEVIE EDWARDS

I am trying to write poems that stand inside of uncertainty and still find things to praise. And I don’t think it matters if I praise my sore legs that keep walking me home from work each night, or if I praise the relief of night rain in my first Carolinian July, or if I praise an idea of a home I miss, or if I praise the mild infection in my right nipple for not being cancer, or if I praise my friend who has stomach cancer but keeps living beyond the rational limits doctors have suggested—it is all praising living. It is all beholding the terrible beautiful uncertainty of being human and saying thank you. I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than gratitude, and poetry helps me to access it.

THE POWER OF POETRY #33: AMY SAUL-ZERBY

  THE POWER OF POETRY – Amy Saul-Zerby   In order to explain the power of poetry to you, I need you to understand about metaphors. EXAMPLE: TIME IS AN OCEAN It brings things to you then takes them away It seems bottomless but is not If you stop moving,

THE POWER OF POETRY #32: LEE ANN RORIPAUGH – SOUTH DAKOTA’S POET LAUREATE

LEE ANN RORIPAUGH – SOUTH DAKOTA’S POET LAUREATE Poetry is the shape-shifting ouroboros of language, image, sound, form, and content held in infinite tension. It is the muscular pulse of sheened coil, forked tongue tasting the air. It is a voraciousness of language, hungry to apprehend and take in the

THE POWER OF POETRY #31: SARA HENNING

    The Power of Poetry – Sara Henning I’d like to tell you a story about life’s untamable narrative that leaves us transformed. In other words, I’d like to tell you a story about my relationship to poetry. At 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning this past July, my mother

THE POWER OF POETRY #30: LAUREN GILMORE

  Two years ago, as part of my hometown’s annual literary festival, I competed in a teen poetry slam. For winning, I was given the opportunity to open for two of the headliners, Major Jackson and Robert Wrigley. It was a poem about my father dying. I read it from

THE POWER OF POETRY #29: A.M. O’MALLEY

THE POWER OF POETRY  — A.M. O’Malley I first found poetry when I was nine years old in a beat up paperback copy of Alfred Tennyson’s collected poems that my father had. One Saturday, when no one was around, I stole the book away to my corner of the back

THE POWER OF POETRY #28: “Warrendale, a Chance Medley with Lines from “Brother of Leaving”” – Cal Freeman

Warrendale, a Chance Medley with Lines from “Brother of Leaving” The Warrendale neighborhood sits on the far west side of the city of Detroit. I describe my childhood home and the neighborhood in which it rests in my first collection of poems, Brother of Leaving. Historically it was a Polish

THE POWER OF POETRY #27: Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

Poetry, like any art, is about connection, either to our inner-self or to another being. In the darkest or most joyous times of our life, everything is meaningless unless our thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires are shared and not simply reverberated back to us in an empty hall. Let’s say one

THE POWER OF POETRY #26: “REVENGE OF THE NERDS” – ROB STURMA

The Power of Poetry: Revenge of the NerdsBack in the day when I was still a fledgling emcee with the acronym FIRST-MC, I wanted to be KRS-ONE so much. I loved his music and his proclamations that he was a Teacher and a Poet with the skills of an Emcee.

THE POWER OF POETRY #25: DONNEY ROSE

   The Power of Poetry      – Donney Rose I came into poetry in a way that many young Black boys find an entry point to the world of creative writing, through hip hop. My older brothers were hip hop fans, thus I grew up in the culture and

THE POWER OF POETRY #24: LOGEN CURE

I self-published a book of poems when I was 19. Print-on-demand websites like Lulu were just beginning to gain popularity. I’m one of those people who has been a writer her whole life. By 19 I had plenty of work to create a book and I figured, why not? I

THE POWER OF POETRY #23: Rachel Wiley

   I have test anxiety and I feel like I am being tested most of the time. When this anxiety spikes I forget words and either yell a lot or go very still until I make it back to home. Once home I can deal with my feelings alone like

POETS ON POETS #1: “Muriel Rukeyser’s “Calling” and the Power of Poetry” – JOANNA PENN COOPER

  Faith is found here, not in a destiny raiding and parceling out knowledge and the earth, but in a people who, person by person, believes itself. Do you accept your own gestures and symbols? Do you believe what you yourself say? When you act, do you believe what you

POWER OF POETRY #22: “I WANT TO KEEP HAPPENING” – SARAH XERTA

  “The Power of Poetry: I Want to Keep Happening” Sarah Xerta I’m hesitant to write about the power of poetry because I don’t want to romanticize anything. Anne Sexton said “It’s the poetry that seems to be saving me” and she still eventually killed herself. I can’t forget this.

THE POWER OF POETRY #21: RONNIE K. STEPHENS

THE POWER OF POETRY – Ronnie K. Stephens There is no origin story, here. No single point on the broadside of this universe. For me, poetry has been a series of planets dotting up the sky when I’m not looking, and suddenly I’m thirty-two with a galaxy spread out around

THE POWER OF POETRY #20: “I USED TO HATE POETRY” – DENICE FROHMAN

 Photo Courtesy of Conrad Erb, LiveConnections “I Used to Hate Poetry” — Denice Frohman For many poets and writers the story goes like this: I always loved reading, I had books everywhere, and started writing poetry early on as a kid. I’m not that poet. My parents were concerned with

THE POWER OF POETRY #19: ANNA BINKOVITZ

   The Power of Poetry ​Last week I was sitting in a classroom at Lesley University, listening to my professor Rafael Campo open a seminar on the elegy, and the power of poetry to “speak the unspeakable.” One example we looked at was Martha Collins’ poem “Her Poem,” which addresses