June ramblings.
They could transform at will the very air they breathed into a variety of sweet songs. Letter from the editor, June, 2026
More Than Half a Poet: The Grasmere Journals
It’s a strange but probably not-so-strange thing that a beautifully-written account of the baking of bread, of illness and worry, of the beauty of the light on flying crows, the wind on the water, the glow through the mountains, would have such an enduring power to move us.
The Legendary Iranian Poet Who Gives Me Hope
“Read Forugh’s poems and you’ll find the very forces that shape our moment: misogyny, censorship, nativism, consumerism, the annihilating violence of war. Read her poems and you’ll find that they, like all the best poems, don’t merely offer a reprieve from the abuses and terrors of the world, but a repudiation of the forces that make those abuses and terrors possible: ignorance and political regimes for which ignorance has been and will always be their life’s blood.”
A Box of Slides
A poem from Mike Ladd reflecting on time, memory, love and ephemerality
Letter From the Editor, July, 2025: The Point
Heat wave ramblings.
The Tenth Muse: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
“Known as the “Tenth Muse” or as ‘The Phoenix of America’ due to her formidable achievements in literature and scholarship, she is now revered as an early feminist.”
Wendy Okeke’s Vision of Freedom
“Nigerian poet Wendy Okeke uses the dark recent past of political failure, youth angst, and government violence against its own citizens as a point of entrance in poems that resonate with sensuality, self-affirmation, and a continuous search for freedom.”
Taigu Ryōkan: You Do Not Need Many Things
“Why are you acting like such a fool?”
I nod my head and don’t answer.
I could say something, but why?
Do you want to know what’s in my heart?
From the beginning of time: just this! just this!
Blossom Drunk: Spring Poems from Basho
Some thoughts on Basho’s spring poems, writings, and journeys, from Arthur Davis.
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