By Rumple Oxbridge (The Pacific’s purely imaginary in-house rhymer) Breasting Men To get it off their chests some women bare their breasts. But looking so arresting can get them arrested because it’s men they’re breasting. [A […]
Becoming Our Enemy Sometime we’ll have to risk Becoming our enemy. It will take some warming up, Eyes and teeth offered Shyly, arms unarmed. No words at first to blur The strange exchange, […]
The Poem to End All Cruelty For many years she wanted to write a poem To end all cruelty. But always she failed to start Or finish because she thought: Who am […]
A Banished Sound by John Kaufman Banishment has this benefit: Art becomes your argument. You’re free To dabble in the resistance of language, Rebel in babble, decorate the walls With something […]
There Is by John Kaufman There is injustice . . . There is tragedy . . . And there is a woman utterly frank laughing as she unbuttons her blouse. And […]
According to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 51% of Americans approve of the CIA’s “harsh interrogation” of prisoners, while 28% disapprove and 20% aren’t sure. Most striking and appalling is that 45% […]
Today’s post comes to you via Guernica magazine and Indian poet, writer & scholar Manash Bhattacharjee. In his short essay, Bhattacharjee explains why Sartre was wrong to claim that only prose can properly address […]
By John Kaufman (Translated by Julia Dubnoff via The Divine Sappho) Some say an army of horsemen, some of footsoldiers, some of ships, is the fairest thing on the black earth, but […]
Torture and war are intimately related. Torture is a subset of war: brutality directed at an individual and justified in the name of “defense.” What was the justification across the Bush administration […]
[A few lines for these times from Langston Hughes.] Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America. (Read the rest of the poem at the link below.) […]
Here are two poems by the 19th Century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who was, for the record, a Unitarian pacifist who reluctantly supported the Civil War as the only way of […]
American Life in Poetry: Column 505 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE Stuart Kestenbaum is a Maine poet with a new book, Only Now, from Deerbrook Editions. In it are a number […]
(Here’s a link to a printed copy of Whittier’s poem, published in a newspaper called the Signal of Liberty in 1842.) Most days I am of two minds, a state of being I’m […]
(This poem of mine first appeared in the last issue of Verse Wisconsin, Issue 113, in April 2014.) What We Must Preserve by John Kaufman To hear each other, […]
Islamic State militants being driven out of #Kobane, Kurdish commander tells BBC http://t.co/JRe0aQuyYD pic.twitter.com/FdX6de7Fpa — BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 16, 2014 I was struck yesterday by this BBC-tweeted photograph of people on the border […]
Feeding the Birds By John Kaufman for W.S. Merwin Here in the city we try to remember the birds, offering seed to nourish nothing but flight and song. We have sown plants […]
Welcome to American Life in Poetry. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. ****************************** American Life in Poetry: Column 498 BY […]
No, “local reality” is not some new social media term. To find it, turn away from your screen. No app for real faces, real books and real birds. Or a real dream. […]
Though the real news was that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke had just been endorsed by the largest police union in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s online headline said, “Mary Burke stumbles […]
At Tuesday’s U.N. Climate summit, President Obama spoke of the United States and China, as the world’s two “biggest emitters” of carbon dioxide, as nations that “have to lead” the world on […]
Claiming that the United States already has the legal authority under both U.S. and U.N. law, President Obama notified Congress that he has ordered more airstrikes in Iraq and, for the first […]
Using crowd spotters and a mathematician, organizers of the People’s Climate March estimate that about 311,000 people marched yesterday through the streets of Manhattan for action on climate change. Hopefully this show […]
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