Here's a poem from long before I started The White Whale. The imagery came to me in a dream, and I woke up the next day and wrote the poem.
Ishmael’s Dream
Isaac Post, 1843
They say you changed, you defected--- joining the ranks of the county’s Anti-Slavery Society. But you stood tall, as your name suggests, committed to your conviction, regardless of any whipping words, at least that’s what I’ve gathered so far. Indeed, there were others before and after, and there will continue to be others, as has …
Notes on the Passing of a Tree
Sugar Maple, October 2020 I come outside to berate the men, pulled up on my sidewalk in their truck, not realizing it's really a hearse, these the pall bearers They mean no harm; they have a job to do and they apologize, but then the lift and chipper arrive, and I know what death lies …
Ted Kooser on the Magic of Metaphor
I recently came across an online interview with the poet Ted Kooser from World Literature Today that shared his thoughts on the power of metaphor. In the past few months, I’ve been rereading one of his books, Splitting an Order, and sometimes I’ll select one of his poems to imitate in my own writing. So …
Sizing Up Walt Whitman & Friends
It’s about this time that I’m usually wrapping up my teaching of American Romanticism. We’ve made it through Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and we’re just about done with my favorite, Henry David Thoreau. Over the years, I’ve made deletions and additions to the scope and sequence, hoping …
The White Whale 