Apr 12, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
Across America, powerful imagery and musical cadence ring out in coffee shops and onto the page during National Poetry Month. Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, the month-long recognition celebrates the poets’ integral role in our culture...
Apr 12, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
Dear Friends unknown, We are joined together by so many things in grief. Maybe there’s a luminous cord connecting us through sleepless hours and hardest times. The poet Jack Ridl told me years ago, after my father died, “Grief is an ambush. When you’re least...
Apr 11, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
Before my son Finn died, I already had a daily writing practice in place. The day he died was the first night I hadn’t written a poem in over thirteen years. And then I didn’t write at all for the first seven weeks after his death. I suppose on the surface then it...
Apr 11, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
Losing anyone in your life affects EVERYTHING in your life. Your perspectives shift. You question your own mortality. Losing someone close to you makes you feel like a raw nerve in a world of razor-wire. Everything hurts. Losing my dad just before becoming a father,...
Apr 11, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
I lost a best friend, fellow vagabond, and gifted poet to a long battle with cancer. We traveled and performed together for years. We joked over homemade-hotel-room drinks about how the $31 we raked in from the donations for the night’s house concert, or whatever it...
Apr 10, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
First, I have lived long enough to have outlived most of the people who were important to me when I was young. My parents died years ago. My younger brother died three years ago. All but one of my aunts and uncles have died. Cousins have died. Many close friends have...
