The poet W.D. Ehrhart, veteran of both the Marines and Vietnam Veterans Against the War asks seriously, how can people like Henry Kissinger claim a lifetime of “no regrets”?
Schools may be in trouble, assesses Vermont poet Ann Fisher, but not the fault of students who create their own “precipitation” despite “all the measured wisdom/ we’ve provided.”
We look to our elders to demonstrate another way of being in this broken world, extending our circle of commitment to the person in front of us, or to a group of people, like she did with Palestinian people. June taught us it is important to practice self-love, to show commitment to your community and to extend that care to those struggling for justice around the world.
Each state appears here in alphabetical order. With a poem for the District of Columbia, and a poem serving as Preface, 52 poems. But This Land invites (and even demands) that its organization and its meanings be constructed by each reader.
For poet Joseph Zaccardi, the Vietnam war lingers in memory for the fear it wrought among soldiers, but also the loss of camaraderie “after all these/years scattered across American towns and cities…”
San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil reminds us that the war in Ukraine goes on, people are dying, all obscured by political shadows and dubious communications.
On Gene Andrew Jarrett’s “Paul Laurence Dunbar”
Los Angeles Review of Books
During his lifetime, Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American, was among the most famous poets in the United States. It is one of the great paradoxes of the early Jim Crow era. This biography sheds new light on the writer's life and work.
On Veterans Day, we honor Gerald Sloan’s poem, commissioned by a local symphony to be recited at a choral performance of Wilfred Owen's famous sonnet (see below).
Spread the word