Of the numerous poetry books I’ve read this year, Ruth Thompson’s Woman with Crows (Saddle Road Press, 2013) is the most personally meaningful to me. I just turned 42, undeniably middle-aged, and my son starts preschool this fall. All around me, it seems, are warnings and laments that youth is fleeting, and we must cling
Two Poems from Ruth Thompson’s “Woman with Crows” Read More »
I grew up in a high-rise on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The dominant group in our micro-neighborhood were Orthodox Jews, though there were also numerous Hispanic families and some Irish, Asian, and liberal Jewish folks (like my family). Our building had 20 floors with seven or eight apartments each. Many modern Orthodox Jews
Religious Rights and the Common Good Read More »
Last month, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the US Supreme Court issued the controversial ruling that Christian owners of closely held for-profit corporations had a religious liberty right to deny contraceptive coverage in their employee health insurance plans. Hobby Lobby and two other companies had sought exemptions from the section of the Affordable Care
Hobby Lobby’s Questionable Theology Read More »
Helen Leslie Sokolsky’s distinctive new poetry chapbook, Two Sides of a Ticket (Finishing Line Press, 2014), contains a portrait gallery of urban characters. Their alienation is healed, momentarily, by the author’s mature and compassionate re-imagining of the lives she glimpses in passing. These narratives show us recognizable scenes made fresh by Sokolsky’s original metaphors. I
Poetry by Helen Leslie Sokolsky: “Friday’s Dress” Read More »
Welcome back, patient readers, to my redesigned blog! Goodbye GoDaddy, hello WordPress. Kudos to web designer Derek Allard at Tunnel 7 and programmer Ryan Askew. What’s new: Social media sharing buttons on each post. Wider columns for proper formatting of reprinted poems. Color scheme upgraded from “Colonel Mustard in the library” to “Expensive box of
Reiter’s Block Reloaded and New Poems: “Polish Joke”, “Mis Numeros” Read More »