Moving fighting words this week from a conversation on police brutality to Black women to the Middle East isn’t a disruption really, since the same principles apply: structural supremacies, power colluding with power over the heads of the disenfranchised/dispossessed who are being silenced; power accruing to power and powerlessness to powerlessness, in an endless repetitive circle; all of it disguised by the usual banalities that manage to be boring as well as lethal at the same time. We need to refocus on the Middle East for a number of reasons. First, timeliness — oh, not about the length of ..read more

For Western, English-speaking readers, the 19th century British author Charles Dickens was perhaps the major portrayer of boarding schools as evil. Think Oliver Twist. Boarding schools constituted a nightmare residence for children: stern, punishing headmasters, sadistic headmistresses, brutal teachers, deprivation of food and warmth, physical punishment, and other evils accumulated on the page — and, I imagine, in real life too — to terrify scores of us growing up. Think Jane Eyre. But a real history of boarding schools is no less frightening, corrupt, or cruel, and any child worth her rebell ..read more

We are approaching a point in civil discourse where we begin the slide into madness. To feel and express anguish over the torment that Israel suffered (and still suffers) in the Hamas attack becomes instantly equated with denouncing Palestinians, and to mourn in grief for what Palestinians suffered (and still suffer) under Benjamin Netanyahu’s siege of Gaza is to be branded anti-Semitic. (Semitic, by the way, refers to both Hebrews and Muslims, so anti-Semitism is something they hideously endure together. As for Netanyahu, he got exactly what he wanted – war as the ultimate diversion of attent ..read more

From Harvesting Darkness: New Poems 2019-20233 Terms of Art (for Cherrie Moraga) Some people, they claim, manage to die peacefully in their sleep. How can anyone tell that? How does anyone say how anyone lives or could die—above all in their sleep? For in that sleep who knows what wakenings may come? The mystery slams shut and locks behind you once you enter it. Only the one question—what now?—endures. No matter how you answer that, you’re dead. Nyctophobia is fear of darkness, octophobia fear of light. Terms of art. The best you can long for and dread is to live out your life as an artist, I ..read more

The Turkish earthquakes set me off, and sent me off also, into rage. Because rural women in Turkey live their entire lives under virtual house arrest. Hijab, “properly observed religious ways,” requires among other things that women stay at home, unless accompanied by a male relative — so think about it: following the first small shock, the men rushed out of their homes for safety in the open air, but the women couldn’t. When the real quakes hit, it was the women and children that they buried.The men had got away. News reports said that over 2000 people had died. Or was it 2000 women and child ..read more

Patriarchal history is the story of one long bloodbath ruptured by moments of aspiration and eons of denial. Inhuman, they keep saying, animals! But animals are far more civilized. They don’t arm themselves, they don’t practice revenge. When will we recognize who we are? Our behavior is all too brutally human. In the late 1980s, I spent quite a bit of time working with women in the Middle East region, and was there during the Second Intifada, in Israel, Egypt, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria–and the Gaza Strip. I have written at length about this in two books, The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terror ..read more

Oh my god have I had Covid. I don’t do anything, it seems, by halves. And I have really truly honestly wow had Covid. In fact, I am still sick, groping my way through the fog of post Covid lassitude, total lack of energy, and for lack of a better name to call it, brain-fog-woo-woo. Finally, I did test negative, but I feel as though I’m walking underwater, and certainly thinking underwater, which means not thinking clearly, or much at all. Granted, there’s the Parkinson’s, plus I was a moronic smoker for years so have a (fortunately mild) case of COPD. Still, I have never experienced anything q ..read more

Welcome back, and welcome to the book party! I’m celebrating the just-now publication of my eighth collection of poetry, Harvesting Darkness, by Spinifex Press. It’s available from Amazon and other online sources as well as from bookstores. I’m truly proud of it; I think it’s the best work I’ve done yet, and I hope you are moved by it. A few words about the book itself: many of the poems are shaped formally (sonnets, for example). I found such structure helpful in engaging the dark subjects and themes we are all living through, including aging, political anger, environmental angst, and the fra ..read more

Harvesting Darkness is the title of my new book of poems, due out this coming September. So, since this will be my last post of the season until then, I wanted to share one of my favorite poems in it with you. I hope you have a peaceful and joyful summer. Lacemakers (for Suzanne Braun Levine) The little Infanta Princess of Spain was dressed in lace for her portrait. Yet courtiers thought her not perfect enough, so added the Dwarf to heighten her beauty. The painting is famous because of the Dwarf. They also assumed it our duty for centuries to gladly go blind tatting the edges of their nightca ..read more

This week, I’m turning over my blogpost space to my sister, friend, and co-founder of The Women’s Media Center, climate activist and actor, Jane Fonda. She sent me the text of this speech she gave recently, and it blew me away with its factual solidity, urgency, personal courage, and passion. I do so love this woman! WE CAN’T HAVE HEALTHY PEOPLE ON A SICK PLANET Speech to City of Hope, NY, 6/8/23 Last summer, I was diagnosed with Low-grade B cell Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and began chemotherapy at St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, CA. This was not my first encounter with cancer. I’d had breast c ..read more