“Reading, for me, is not always an escape, but rather a dissection undertaken to find some meaning in the deleterious repetition of the world’s dark history. At times, I find it futile, this…

“In notes by his translators in the books he then sent me, over the years, I learn: that he studied the violin on Rhodes early in life, and was a musician-poet from the…

Speculative Friction “Mystery stands with us and speaks through us as we chant and drum and hum our connection to that hidden world that stands beside and inside the one in which we…

“Hesiod describes Pandora as kalon kakon, beautiful evil. Is this reference to women as evil, written sometime between 750–650 BCE, the first such recorded calumny against the gender? Perhaps not. The Judeo-Christian reference to…

Close Encounters By David Havird “William O. Douglas—the name, and not just the poster’s rusty red lettering, appears to have faded. He is ‘Justice Warren Douglas’ in one scholar’s reference to the poem;…

“My first column of the year, after a long silence, won’t be sweet or pretty, for pretty is a weak thing robbed of power by mediocrity, and this is no time for either.…

Singing & Drowning By Janet Kenny “I am basically a formal poet who ignores the rules. Music has always dominated anything I do, and music is something I can’t escape in poetry. As…

Signal & Memory By Daniel J. Dodson “Near Abilene and Amarillo, where wind turbines stretch across the plains like rows of white tuning forks, Alphabet/Google has built new facilities designed to inhale vast…

“What would prompt a well-educated woman of a certain age to take up such a dubious pastime? A pastime that makes her long-patient husband of 48 years sigh audibly when he enters the…

“When we turn our gaze skyward, to the constellations and planets that have guided human wonder for millennia, we encounter names that carry stories far beyond the shimmer of their surfaces. Naming is…