Portside

Louis Armstrong believed his birthday was July 4, 1900 (though a recent discovery suggests August 4, 1901 is correct). But Elaine Feinstein's portrait of that great trumpet player just starting out seems appropriate for this American holiday weekend.

The award-winning poet Julia B. Levine opens her eyes to global tragedies we leave for our children to inherit and our attempts still to shelter their innocence from what will haunt them.

Minnesota poet James P. Lenfestey's "Skin of Dust" offers an aerial view of our environmental holocaust, the Earth as a living body endangered.

Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin sees analogies between the recent wave of police shootings and the old Fugitive Slave Act.

Los Angeles poet Bonnie S Kaplan works with former prisoners and parolees, easing the transition back to the community. Her poem Our Aquarium hints at the difficulties of adjustment.

In a world of multiple crises and bad politics, Wisconsin poet Margaret Rozga celebrates the spirit of unyielding global resistance.

California poet Erica Goss raises the question, knowing the reader will have an answer: Is one child's life worth more than another's?

The poet explains the transition between these two poems and reveals a mordant humor.: "That Sure is My Little Dog," written some years ago, arose from what I felt at the time was a lack of political outrage on the left, particularly among younger people, but by the time of Occupy Wall Street, I was feeling more hopeful about my generation (the Woodstock era folks) passing the banner on to the next.generation. Which leads us to the second poem, "Leonard Cohen's Guitar."

Amid controversies about surveillance from Big Brothers, there's also the matter of what the Little Brothers and Sisters know and exploit. Colorado poet Jared Smith takes an ironic view of what it means to know too much and therefore nothing at all.

"I learned how to fight the long shifts, the bashed fingers," writes poet David Salner of his mining experiences, but he also sees the beauty of sorrow. An appropriate lyric for May Day.