What is poetry that does not save/Nations or people? asks Czeslaw Milosz, surveying the destruction of Poland in 1944. Is he extolling the possibility for poetry to save us or lamenting its impossibility? Perhaps both. Milosz’s poem “Dedication,” ends up by

In this column I want to continue my search for poems that articulate and respond to human suffering, including the murder of innocent children in Texas and the persistence of a World-War-II-like conflict in Ukraine. As if by rote my hands find Denise Levertov’s

One thing after another for the past two years. Trump, Covid, climate catastrophes. And now the war in Ukraine. My mother was born in Poltova, south of Kiev. She escaped pogroms as a young child, fleeing in steerage to Canada.

I usually wait for a topic to come to me for these columns, but the death, on November 21st, 2021 of Robert Bly dictates a column. Perhaps more than any poet of our time, Bly insisted that poetry held the key to our healing,

“I’m falling in love with Calliope” sings Bob Dylan on his 2020 album “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” Calliope, the muse of harmony and epic poetry, is Dylan’s latest, and perhaps ultimate love. For those who want to follow, here is the link to

It has been said of Freud that he took the gods down from Olympus and placed them in the family. The prophecy that Oedipus so tragically lived out is replayed in the erotic intensities and aggressive fantasies between children and their parents. Freud’s

A few days ago I had an experience that felt like a bad acid trip. I walked out of my home office, where I’d been Zooming with clients, to give my wife a brief greeting. She was watching President Trump land at the