Two days ago, our next-door neighbors marked the birthday of the adult son they outlived. Yesterday, my wife’s childhood friend commemorated what would have been her son’s Bar Mitzvah. I feel for them deeply. And tomorrow, had he lived more than three days, our own son would have turned five. It is a significant age …
“Hope is the thing with feathers” -Emily Dickinson This Thanksgiving, I was keenly aware of my gratitude for an absent member of our family. Had he lived, our son would have been four years old. I am truly thankful for his brief presence in our lives, which activated my paternal instincts, and gave me a …
“Then what are we fighting for?” -Attributed to Winston Churchill, in response to a suggestion that arts education be cut to fund the war effort. There has been a furor over recent cuts in humanities education at the university level in America. Most of the counter-arguments for keeping the humanities alive play out the “transferable …
I prepared my set for the Weird Words reading at the Beatrice Wood Center knowing two special friends would be in the audience. Although, as I say in the poem, I never knew their adult son, having lost my own son in his infancy, I feel a special connection with them. One day, this poem …
Fugue is the first short book in the third volume of the Lost Horse Press New Poets Series. Bobo was born in Kansas and now lives in Indiana with her musician husband. Herself a “recovering musician,” Bobo writes about an ex-pianist’s relationship to her instrument, citing two definitions of “fugue” on the cover page–first, the …
The September issue of Salamander Cove focuses on love and loss. I am honored to have my poem, “To Friends Not Knowing What to Say”–which first appeared in Iota 85–take its place alongside spare and stunning tributes by Chris Agee, Anna Ross, Dave Jarecki, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Jim Murdoch, Jamie Dedes, and Charles Bernstein. I found …
