Mar 18, 2026
Who knows why we fall in love with certain poems? We print them out, pin them up on our doors and walls and mirrors, save the tattered books and chapbooks in which they first appeared to us. Is it the language, the subject, a particular phrase, the mysterious way they...
Feb 12, 2026
I was raised in a time and place, and in a family, that followed strict protocol about home-handling of the American flag. Fly it on Memorial Day, on Flag Day, on the 4th of July, Labor Day. Never let it touch the ground. Never fly it in the rain. Take it in at...
Jan 26, 2026
The temperature dropped to 5 below zero by 7 pm last Saturday night, January 24. Less than twelve hours had passed since the shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents on a busy street in Minneapolis; it had been a terrible day following terrible weeks. ...
Jan 19, 2026
A timely excerpt from the official program for the 1963 March on Washington: “It will be orderly, but not subservient. It will be proud, but not arrogant. It will be non-violent, but not timid. It will be unified in purposes and behavior, not splintered into...
Jul 3, 2025
I was today years old when I figured out that my grandparents had told me a story that is apparently not true. In my slow summery childhood, I traveled with them on many Fridays out of suburban Chicago, past industrial Gary, Indiana, and up to Michigan. Before the...
