Category Archives: Uncategorized

Blake, Gibran, and Harris’s Joy

The power and effectiveness of Harris and Walz’s joy is captured in poems by Blake and Gibran.

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Harris’s Speech and a Baldwin Story

The shift in Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech–from heartwarming bio to Churchillian call to action–reminds me of the shift in Sonny’s jazz playing in Baldwin’s story.

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When Stories Are Weaponized

In the hands of culture warriors, stories have become weaponized. It’s difficult to figure out how we should fight back.

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Gorman Dares Us to Dream Together

Amanda Gorman’s Democratic National Convention poem celebrated an all-inclusive vision of America.

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Thoughts on Book Bans

Books are unsettling, which is why they are often banned. But we need to be unsettled to get a handle on the chaos that confronts us.

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Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Few poems better capture for me that vision of God’s heaven on earth than Blake’s “The Divine Image.”

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Kamala Harris’s Moment to Rise

Angelou’s “Still I Rise” is the right poem to celebrate Kamala Harris

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One Man Loved the Pilgrim Soul in You

In which I explain how Yeats’s “When You Are Old and Gray” frames the dedication that opens my book.

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The Dangerous Power of Libraries

Libraries as described by poet Paul Engle are sometimes repositories of dynamite, sometimes of comfort.

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