A Bouquet of Poems

Thoughts on the many poems by the wonderful poets in the class I have been teaching.

A note: Below, you will find many wonderful poems, each written by one of the members of a class I have been teaching on poetry and generosity and much more. For their final assignment, students in my class are writing about a poem by one of their classmates — reflecting, wondering, connection-building-and-making, going wherever, feeling surprised, paying attention. I wanted to share — with their permission — the work of these poets with you, and to reflect, in a similar way, on their work in the space that follows. This class has given me a great deal of light and life lately; I hope you find some similar worth in their words. I think you will.

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Despite the Current’s Constant Pulling^

If loneliness can be cruel, can it too be merciful?

If a prayer cannot be made, in its stead: a poem.

In Mead’s poem, the speaker can’t remember what she’s done, but here I remember.

I remember reciting it to you.

A phrase I find suspicious: She couldn’t help herself. But, couldn’t she?

I couldn’t help sullying her poem.

Except I could.

What makes the months bare is the bargaining. What makes the river speak is sky. I was there does not equal I was present. These tatters that remain remain despite me. I don’t want to write you.

Of course, Mead says. As in what’s expected. Or, of course, permission granted. What about a map? A route made by way of monostitch: I do not know who you are.

I don’t know you, either. Never did. Is that why each new betrayal was such a shock? Because it reminded us we were strangers?

I’ve long outgrown this longing, this river, this place. It has no mercy.

Then why return? Her words: hands lifting me back:

Because [I think] I like to visit all the shimmering, heart-stabbing questions without answers.^^

Because [I think] I am trying to forgive myself.


—Elio Hoban


^This poem is in deep conversation with Jane Mead’s poem “Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make” and both borrows and responds to bits of language from her poem, including the title of this piece. 

^^Mary Oliver, “Hummingbirds.”

Untitled

The moving walkway, also known as a travolator, which is better, 
often seems to be out of order at the airport.
What if you are on it when it halts?
Stand still and wait? Try to look nonchalant?
Maybe it will turn right back on.
If you keep walking forward and it restarts you could get caught up
and lurch. 
If you turn around and walk back, to make a little u-turn,
people will see you.
It could take a long time to walk back all that way.
You could scramble over the side and keep going but
you’d have to lug your suitcases up and over too. 
Honestly any conveyor belt makes you think of the horror story where someone’s scarf gets stuck
at the end of an escalator and there they are strangling, humiliated, in the middle of a mall,
holding up traffic. 
Anyway, the thing about walking on stationary ground, just on the other side of the rail, is
you do get to the same place,
just slower.


—Kate Dwyer

On Hitting a Dead End in the Biggest Maze(:/of) Your Life

A lot of the examples you get are very linear, but I swear it's becoming pretty normal to draw a circle or two along the way, retrace a line in the opposite direction then slip and draw a tangent off into the middle of, respectively, nowhere (until you get there of course). Not to say that's the way you have to do it now, just that there are lots of ways besides the straight line one. My mom used to hate turning around to go back to get something when she left it at the house. Depending on how important it was, though, she would. I don't remember what counted as important. Sunscreen? A rain jacket? Cash? You make a mental note to put one of each in your backpack for the next time this happens. If it's your house keys, they're locked inside and you can figure that out later anyway. Maybe you didn't leave anything behind, but you left the stove on. You'd have to go back for that. If you'd left the stove on, you wouldn't think to yourself, "well, the house is probably already burnt to the ground, no use going back now." You'd turn around because, more likely than not, something would be left and worth saving. It is frustrating to have to turn around, to go back, to hold the implications of needing to go back. Think of it like a maze. You’re still searching for the center. And hey, now you’ve got sunscreen.


—Carly Kaste

Lost & Found in Antiquity

The day before the longest day
of the year, we kiss our way
through the museum. You point
at a catchlight—a reflection across
pupil and iris. I've never seen
a photograph like this before, silver
gelatin glistening with contrast.
Fiber, texture, grain, ghost. I squint
and it feels like a secret, a shadow
written inside my skin. We walk
alongside artifacts of time: bones
become tools, tribal effigies, gilded death
masks. Hieroglyphics of battles forged 
in sand. We mark ourselves wherever we go,
handprints on cave walls, on glass, on each
other. Pompeii lovers looking skyward before
turning to stone. They say the Library of Alexandria
burned three times before being lost to antiquity—
all those scrolls of parchment turned to dust,
flames dancing like sunset on the sea.
The way your eyes burn into mine
when we are finally finally finally alone.


—Hannah Levy

Is There Anything Else?

Sometimes I wonder if 
there is anything left for me to learn 
at the ripe old age of twenty-five. 
After all, I learned last week that you can’t 
entrust metal to a microwave
when I gave it my foil-wrapped 
chicken biscuit and came back to it smoldering 
in its own ashes. When they played Destiny’s Child at dance class, 
I went, with all seriousness, 
"You know, this sounds a lot like Beyoncé,”  
as if I’d discovered one of the secrets of the universe.
Is there anything else?
When I walked you back to yours and told you Good night, I love you
and you said Good night, and shut the door.
Only then, on the long subway ride back home, did I realize
I have never been so wise.


—Raymond Zhu

do dah

some people hate doin’ the do
others don’t hate but simply won’t do the do
it sucks when someone tries to force you to do the do
it sucks when you try to force yourself to do the do
my parents said i should leave my options open
but what they meant was they wanted me to do the do
i don’t want to do the do
never have never will
my do is done did
over done finito
but how do i know if i’m doin’ the do?
or not doin’ the do?
do you have to do the do in order to stop doin’ the do?
or can you go straight to its negation?
is doin’ the don’t the negation of doin’ the do?
or just another sneaky way to do the do?
can something be itself & its opposite
at the same time?
or is that just another version of doin’ the do?
maybe you can’t escape doin’ the do
like a klein bottle having no inside or outside
or both an inside and outside at the same time
which sounds like a contradiction or oxymoron of some sort
but the klein bottle does its own do
from the inside out & the outside in
like dylan said once
“impossible and he hands you a bone”
mr jones is certainly doin’ the do
and so is dylan
is it the same do?
are there different do’s?
some people like to enumerate the do’s and don’t’s
but to me it’s all doin’ the do
anyway you slice it
or dice it
or fry it
or spice it
you gotta try it
and then lo and behold
you’re doin’ the do…again
for the nth time
too numerous to mention
an infinitude of do’s to be done
simultaneously
but gödel said that time doesn’t exist
so what could simultaneous even mean
or maybe he meant that everything is simultaneous
like you’re walkin’ your dog
and then you notice that, shit, i’m doin’ the do
is this an endless loop or a loopless end?
or a lollapalooza?
where as many bands as possible do the do
there’s so much do being done that one could get
tired
scared
bored
relieved
believing
or blessed
ah, the blessed do
being done to death
by everyone
in no particular order
because when it comes to doin’ the do
there is no particular order
there may be no order at all
which brings us back to gödel
and his timeless universe
where all manner of matter
does the do
ceaselessly
until the
end


—David Belmont

Yard Work

Spring arrives, clear and dry. Out back, 
my father and I collect branches 
and twigs, pile them on the brush heap. 
Blown against the fence, our Christmas tree 
now brown and dry, trails tinsel as 
we drag it over and toss it on top 
of the pile. It's time. My father takes 
newspaper and shoves it beneath 
the twigs and leaves at the bottom. 
"Stand back now, son," he tells me. 
From his pockets he pulls a pack 
of matches, tears one out.  He bends 
and strikes, then—cupping his hands 
against the breeze—lights the fire.   

First a curl of smoke, then orange fingers 
fan upward.  Upward!  Leaping, the flames 
catch and claw. The first lick touches the tree, 
and with an enormous crackling whoosh! 
it blazes, a yellow wall against the sky. 
Lashed by the heat, I stumble back into 
my father's arms. I stand stunned, shielding 
my face, as black vapors stream skyward, 
hissing; my eyes sting and tear. In seconds, 
the tree is turned to black bones; the flames 
subside. Cool air sweeps my face. Behind me, 
my father stands. In silence we watch 
the crumbling limbs burn slowly down to ash. 


—Bruce Schauble

Untitled

It is possible to share a meal with friends, along with stories, grief, fear, mirth, and joy. Pass on a secret with the ketchup. 

It is possible to feel pleasure from something sweet, but not without cost.

It is possible to get out of your head whilst reading a book. It doesn't even have to be a great book. 

It is possible to experience a moment's beauty in a poem. 

It is possible to lose your self in music, or at least temporarily block out the world with something sublime. It is also possible to externalize your anger by blasting metal.  

It is possible to quiet the wolves with fresh air and the steady rhythm of a quick walk, but it requires care as the walk can also rile them. 

It is possible to feel accomplished after washing the dishes or vacuuming. A small reduction of entropy when viewed against the world, but a significant one when viewed within the frame of your life. You gave your time and energy and therefore it is not insignificant.  

It is possible to draw out the poison in your head through your hand and onto a page with ink.  

It is possible to lower the volume of your thoughts by sitting on a boulder listening to the creek murmur. 
It is possible to be still.
It is possible to be silent.
It is possible to be content.
All of these are possible. But not easy. 


—Kenneth Tindall

Confessions

I wrecked my Harley
in the rain, broke
three of my favorite
ribs, tore up my leg,
punctured a lung,
ended up face down
in a loamy ditch beside
a corn field just begging
to be harvested. I heard ears
confess their love for each other.
I heard stalks say their goodbyes.
I heard what you can only hear
dying in a ditch in Indiana
in early October: a psalm, a prayer,
an entire farm whispering
amen.


—Todd Clay Stuart

Yesterday’s Hunger

Train whistles pierce
the early morning air
Wait, not one note but two then three
Wait, not one beat but two short and one long
an attempt at a tune, could it be? 
My brain hungers for patterns,
a musical staff I cannot read
though I do see the lines, 
five of them, the treble clef 
at its beginning. At dusk, 
starlings gather on electrical wires.
Unable to decipher the tune, 
I turn to the ground, the ferns 
in my yard, preparing to unfurl
though now only tight hairy fists.
They will take their time to unfold
as they have for millions of years
right at the edge of chaos
living through fire and ice.
Ferns’ existence across time
reminds me of resilience, 
of order, in the world of nature.

If I prayed, I would put myself 
in the fronds of a fern,
be a spore
and then let go.


—Dominique Brillanceau

In Honor of Mothers, and a Language Without Words Carried Through Time

I am learning French. At dinner a few nights ago, my spouse (John Mark) informed me that his mom, who is nearing 90, shared with him that she is now getting her disposable undergarments from Canada. Apparently, disposable undergarments are made better there. They arrived at my mother-in-law’s house in a box with instructions in French on the sides. So, she thought of me. And she asked John Mark if I would like to have the boxes for the purpose of helping me with practicing my reading of French. She told John Mark that there are a lot of words, like “water” and “river” (??), en francais on the boxes. And that it might be helpful and fun for me to read them. After John Mark and I both had a good laugh, I thought to myself how funny it is - the ways that people find to express their knowing and appreciation of you. Truly, this gesture from my mother in-law, of the boxes for her undergarments (with instructions en francais), is so sweet.

My own mom is a decade younger than my spouse’s mom and has always expressed her knowing of me with the same kind of limited words as someone who is learning a new language, like French: Ma fille est mariee (My daughter is married). Elle a deux filles (She has two daughters). Elle a un travail (She has a job). Elle a cinquant et ans un (She is 51).

Like many kids who grew up in the 80’s (90’s, 2000’s, and probably now), I learned to know myself two dimensionally. I knew myself like a long poem, read once and quickly, with not enough paper. And not enough time. Speed reading was a thing in the 1980’s.

I knew myself from the sidelines of my family, as a bystander hovering in the doorway on the other side of the room, watching a family watch a football game. Listening to shouts at the television. Knowing your mom’s favorite team made a touchdown when you heard her shout:

“Hot Damn!”

Knowing how much she loved football.

I am learning that love travels messy. From my mom to me, from her mom to her, from her mom’s mom to her mom’s mom….and so on.

And so on.

Love has traveled miles through time,

Sometimes reckless… like a force shot through a cannon, across an ocean, without care.

With abandon.

Love has traveled through words we don’t have.

Love has traveled zig-zag through the gaps between us, created by words bent backwards and upside down,

that have come at you and your innocence,

like a bullet.

Love has traveled through a hierarchy of some words over others; through a language that speaks against anything but “all/nothing.” And “Either/Or.”

That tells us we are “this” or we are “that.” And nothing in-between, because there must be “good” and there must be “bad” and there must be some words placed above other words….in order to oppress. 

Love has traveled through the ways we have been cut off from our bodies, minds, souls,

Our selves.

And through the gaps between a person’s,

a world’s,

dis-integrations.

Love has traveled through “1,2, 3, 4, 5 senses working overtime.” (song by XTC)

Love travels above the words, “Tell me five things you did last week.”

And beside the words, “No thank you.”

Love has traveled miles through time…out of breath but still breathing.

I am learning that it is amazing that love exists at all.

I am learning to appreciate the many different ways people show love – an empty box of disposable undergarments (directions en francais); an attempted narration of who I am.

Who am I anyway? Really?

And I am learning to give grace to my own imperfections, while learning that love is not perfect. Sometimes it meanders and spins around until it’s dizzy, or

Shoots out sideways, like a broken sprinkler on a hot summer day.

From some folks, love might arrive muffled, funneled through a fog. And it might not be noticed.

I am learning that none of us should have to hang around hatred, if we can help it.

I am learning that you must know love to give love; and that you must give love to know love. That love just goes around.

I am learning to be cinquante et un ans, and to stay young.

To remember that snakes do swallow elephants (and that this, to some people, might look like a hat).

I am learning the joys of tossing love out into the world, the best that I can - which is sometimes reckless, with abandon - and watching where it lands.

I am learning to reach out and grab love when it is tossed my way. To jump up and catch it…. like a football. And to yell,

“Hot damn!”


—Karen Turner

Misdirection

We trail along the path
in perfect sync, matching strides
to our scroll as we follow our phone’s 
lead, passing trees I cannot name, 
winding rocks on dirt trails where 
white people pretend to not see us 
and ask us to move out of their way
on land none of us can claim. “On your left!" 
bikers shout, meaning, on mine. Google Maps 
cannot show us how to avoid being avoided 
by dogs with owners who assure us their dogs 
are afraid of all people, while we watch them lick 
the palms of the next pale hand they pass.
No problem. We keep trekking until we arrive 
at a tree, a Black Walnut (I Googled it), 
and sit beneath its overlapping leaves, 
feasting on snacks of every color, reading 
poems in our voices, laughing off the day
in the presence of what came before 
any of this.


—Candace Sanders

dream in which i am outside

the dream in which i am outside 
happens every night. 
i circle: vulture, lonesome ghost.
the midnight grass wears thin where i 
cannot step out of the dream, and
the window is structured like a star. 
still: I cannot find a way in.
the night, which never ends, 
grows slowly over me; 
a quiet, creeping darkness. 
in the circled path, I tread 
the moonlight that is shaped 
like a star, like a window, 
but I am looking for the door 
the door the door the door, and I 
cannot find a way in.


—Zoë Cown

Fair Daffodils

Today is my dad’s birthday and
the thought of him, made me think of you
despite the unfairness of it all
I texted him this morning 
to say I would call, and when he texted back
it seemed like any other day.

   72 years
   44 as a father
   My entire lifespan.

Average life expectancy seems generous
until you realize that half of us won’t make it that far
and there are only two chairs at my kitchen table
I will never meet your dad
although I’m certain he can see me now
and that thought makes me stop.


—Adam Jeselnick

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Whatever I say about all of these poems will never be enough. No, how could it be? Perhaps you, like me, felt something while reading these poems en masse, and perhaps it was the opposite of what Karen Turner alluded to in her beautiful, wide-ranging, long-lined poem:

I knew myself like a long poem, read once and quickly, with not enough paper. And not enough time. 

(Also, isn’t that poem wonderful? How it contains a line like this but then decides, with a wholeness of life, like a real love-it-all veracity, to be a long poem, to use all the paper, to be most entirely itself?)

Over the course of the last month, I’ve taken a lot of joy in reading, usually while sitting at my desk on the sixth floor of my high school in between classes, the weekly submissions of students in this class I have been teaching on generosity and anti-prescription when it comes to poetry. Each week, reading through each class member’s response to a prompt, I’ve had the feeling of reading an anthology that we limited few helped create. A little box set. A special edition. All these different poems hovering around the same idea.

And maybe you, reading these poems above, have felt the same. There’s a loveliness to this feeling. And maybe even a coziness (which I know is not, inherently, one of the “points” of poetry, though it could be — why not!). I think what I mean is that there is a real sense that you — meaning me, too, meaning all of us — are not alone.

I think of this line by Kenneth Tindall:

You gave your time and energy and therefore it is not insignificant.  

I don’t know if there’s a better line than that to express what it means to sit with the work of another person and really be with it, really read it. In the end, such a line reminds me that one guiding ethos for us — for all of us — should be to honor the significance of each other’s labor, the labor of our writing, the labor of our imagination, the labor of our attention, of our caring, of our time, of our providing, of our wanting, and of our living. Anything that does not serve that sense of honoring, well — it’s probably harmful, isn’t it? I think of how often we are taught, particularly in schools, to judge before we acknowledge, at the very least, the significance of what or who we are judging.

It’s something echoed in Carly Kaste’s poem, where Kaste writes:

I don't remember what counted as important.

And it’s something echoed, too, in Candace Sanders’ acknowledgment that we are “on land none of us can claim,” and it’s echoed, even further, in the decision to share — work, communion, joy — on that land, rather than to share in judgement or share in violence or share in so much of what we witness in this world:

We keep trekking until we arrive 
at a tree, a Black Walnut (I Googled it), 
and sit beneath its overlapping leaves, 
feasting on snacks of every color, reading 
poems in our voices, laughing off the day
in the presence of what came before 
any of this.

And so, to sit, to simply sit, with these poems over the past few weeks has been a real reminder of how wildly delightful the shared work of poetry can be. How it can be a little bit of an antidote to the consistent awfulness of our discourse and our world. I don’t know about you, but I need this reminder lately. I hesitate to say need, just like I hesitate to say that someone’s work is necessary. But it’s hard, lately, to witness what those in power are doing with their power, and it’s hard to navigate the action, inaction, anxiety, and worry that follows. To sit with the work of others is a reminder of the joy of making, a reminder, too, of what Toi Derricote says: joy is an act of resistance.

I could have said all of this shorter. I could have just borrowed a line from Karen Turner:

I am learning that it is amazing that love exists at all.

One of my favorite moments in any of these poems is a single question at the heart of Raymond Zhu’s poem. It reads:

Is there anything else?

The answer, of course, is yes. The fact that Zhu is willing to ask such a thing in the midst of a poem that deprecates itself is an act of playful, lovely humility. These poems, viewed collectively, show that the answer to such a question is always yes. That there is always one more perspective, one more line, one more image, one more dream, one more life worth describing, or wondering about, or paying attention to.

I feel that, if the answer to such a question is no, we have already given ourselves over to the impossibility of being surprised. And what a joy (absolute joy!) it is to be surprised, like how I was by this one, exclamatory word in Bruce Schauble’s poem:

Upward!

It’s a stunning moment in a stunning poem that seems to inhabit multiple tones at once. A poem of stillness and silence and even, maybe, a touch of fear. But then there is that Upward! and we feel it — don’t we? — the young child’s stunning surprise, and our own, too, how we are reminded of the world’s capacity to change our expectations at any given moment as long as we are offering our attention.

Or, too, consider the opening of Kate Dwyer’s poem:

The moving walkway, also known as a travolator, which is better, 
often seems to be out of order at the airport.

I love two things! And more! About these lines! The first is the introduction of the word travolator, which I will never forget (thank you, Kate), and the second is the determined insistence: “which is better.” It is better, isn’t it? Thank you for surprising me. And thank you for reminding me.

Here’s another joy — the entirety of David Belmont’s poem, in particular this moment:

is doin’ the don’t the negation of doin’ the do?
or just another sneaky way to do the do?

Ah! What fun! Circular and quizzical and playful and also engaged with a question that offers more the more you explore it — if it is possible, at all, to be different.

And here’s another joy — the way that both Hannah Levy and Zoë Cown let words repeat themselves. Like here, in Levy’s poem:

The way your eyes burn into mine
when we are finally finally finally alone.

Or here, in Cown’s:

I am looking for the door 
the door the door the door, and I 
cannot find a way in.

Finally finally finally. The door the door the door. Both of these moments, situated at the end of each poem, felt like offerings, these moments of permission that, through their repetition, told me you are allowed — allowed to feel, allowed to want. Surprise, these poems both say, what I feel and what I am looking for cannot be contained in simply one word. And isn’t that idea a little bit radical and a little bit beautiful, especially now, as those with power limit language and identity and so much more to only one thing, rather than more than one thing, rather than all possible things?

And isn’t that question about allowance one thing worth remembering now? How, if we commit to a politics of allowance rather than a politics of policing, we might be more open to the possibilities that come from accepting others rather than diminishing them? Or, worse — excising them?

I think of how Dominique Brillanceau writes:

If I prayed, I would put myself 
in the fronds of a fern,
be a spore
and then let go.

Right? Isn’t this a more interesting politics — one of relation and one of reduction — than a politics of disconnection and expansive violence? To be less in order to be more — to be taken in the breeze, to be held in such way?

And maybe that’s part of the feeling of experiencing all of these poems at once. As Elio Hoban writes:

If a prayer cannot be made, in its stead: a poem.

Perhaps we are in a place collectively where a prayer cannot be made, a place where we have to wonder about the cruelty, as Hoban writes, of loneliness. And yet we have these poems, which remind us of so much: allowance and permission, attention and surprise, of what is significant, which is to say our work, which is to say each other, which is to say our joy, which is to say that if we spend time with what we each notice, we might find not that we notice the same things, but that our noticing, taken together, accumulates and widens our vision, so that our world becomes larger than our little place in it, that our world becomes big enough to hold all of us.

It’s like how Adam Jeselnick writes, at the very end of his poem:

I will never meet your dad
although I’m certain he can see me now
and that thought makes me stop.

I’m certain he can see me now is the kind of line that makes wonder out of life’s losses. To be certain of mystery is, perhaps, one of the many things that poetry is about. It’s like saying I am certain of what I don’t know. It’s like saying life will make a hole, at times, of what was once here, and I will fill that hole with my wondering. That, too, is one definition of poetry, isn’t it?

Another definition is, as Todd Clay Stuart writes, to hear what you can only hear:

I heard what you can only hear
dying in a ditch in Indiana
in early October: a psalm, a prayer,
an entire farm whispering
amen.

To be open to such a thing — to find in the place where one is a kind of prayer, to recognize it as it is (the word amen means “let it be,” or “so be it”) — is also part of the work of poetry. We see a world and we allow it, rather than inflict ourselves upon it.

Part of my sadness in this moment is the sadness of seeing people use their power to reduce both people and the world’s capacity to be who they are. There is a sense, in our culture, that we must always be change-agents, that we must see people and places and make them different by the fact of our presence. But this poem by Todd Clay Stuart does the opposite. After a moment where the speaker is broken by their own doing (“I wrecked my Harley”), they make the choice to listen, to give themselves over, rather than to continue to take over. It’s a beautiful choice, isn’t it? It is.

One more thing. I am thinking of the ending of Carly Kaste’s poem:

It is frustrating to have to turn around, to go back, to hold the implications of needing to go back. Think of it like a maze. You’re still searching for the center. And hey, now you’ve got sunscreen.

Part of the struggle of this moment, I think, is this feeling of going back, of having been turned around. Part of the struggle, too, is the opposite of Kaste’s poem — this sense that we don’t need to go back. And yet, we still can make the choice, even in this moment, to go back to find one another, to figure out what’s important, and to emerge from that going-back with something needed (whether that’s one another, whether that’s sunscreen). There’s some power in that choice. Some power, for us, amidst the awfulness that those in power make for us.

Reading these poems feels like that. Like going back to search together. Like going back to find something together. Like going back to care together. Like going back to linger, to wonder, to laugh, to talk. I am reminded of the people smoking outside the AA meetings I would attend as a kid, these meetings where I would go to talk with other teens affected by addiction, while the adults talked about their own addictions upstairs. Afterwards, I’d see the adults lingering, not wanting to leave, even in a place that must’ve reminded them of grief. I think I understood later that it hurts more to be away from our pain and alone than it does to be close to it and together.

We do these things — lingering, writing, wondering — in order to live, I think. As part of living. Which is to say, part of coping. To do them together — to be reminded that we do them together — is one of life’s great joys. It is a balm for loneliness. Even now. Especially now. Especially always.

---

Some notes:

1. Here is a website — put together by volunteers — that tracks the jobs lost and lives affected by the de-funding of USAID. It’s worth reading in order to fully understand the severity of what is happening, who it is affecting, and how to help.

2. You can find a list of the work that Writers Against the War on Gaza is doing to build solidarity among writers in support of Palestinian and against their consistent oppression here.

3. Workshops 4 Gaza is an organization of writers putting together donation-based writing workshops and readings in support of Palestine and in awareness of a more just, informed, thoughtful, considerate world. You can follow them here and get more information about them here.

4. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.