• Thoughts

    Are You Threatening Me?

    The husband of a sister-in-law wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a vintage political “pairing” to the most recent family Christmas gathering: “Reagan/Bush 84.” This fellow and I were standing in the kitchen, where the conversation was lagging. Therefore, I decided…

  • Thoughts

    The Touch of the Unknown

    I don’t know that a year can go by without me vowing, again, to read all the poems in The Giant Book of Poetry (edited by William H. Roetzheim) that I bought in 2011, when I decided to embark upon…

  • Thoughts

    Daring Despite the Danger

    “The known, our current story, protects us from the unknown, from chaos—which is to say, provides our experience with determinate and predictable structure. … When we are in the domain of the known, so to speak, there is no reason…