Faith and Doubt

Reiter’s Block Year in Review: 2022

A highly eventful year on the Block! Made My Bones: My third full-length poetry collection, Made Man, was published in March by Little Red Tree, with cover and interior artwork by friend-of-the-Block Tom W. Taylor a/k/a The Poet Spiel. Solstice Lit Mag calls it “a comitragic, day-glo accented, culture-hopping, snort-inducing, gender-interrogating rollercoaster of a ride.”

Reiter’s Block Year in Review: 2022 Read More »

October Links Roundup: Farewell Divas

Happy Spooktober! At the Naumkeag Pumpkin Show last weekend. The entertainment world lost two legendary women this month, both of whom continued creating and performing well into old age. Country star Loretta Lynn died last week at age 90. Best known for her hardscrabble childhood anthem “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Lynn also used her music to

October Links Roundup: Farewell Divas Read More »

The Reactionary Pull of Sacred Texts

I left Christianity because… …the people who took its mystical, supernatural, and personal transformation aspects most seriously are the people currently turning our country into a fascist theocracy. …the paradigm of redemptive sacrifice of the innocent was counterproductive to my healing as a child abuse survivor. …I couldn’t keep fighting for space for my bodily

The Reactionary Pull of Sacred Texts Read More »

May Links Roundup: Courting Fascism

I had a whole list of links to recommend this month, and then Politico broke the story today about the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that seems likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. As feminist journalist Jude Doyle lays out in chilling detail in “We Have Entered the ‘Anti-Gender’ Endgame” at Medium, the Court’s proposed

May Links Roundup: Courting Fascism Read More »

Two Poems from “The Chessmaster’s Daughter” by Barbara Regenspan

Barbara Regenspan is a poet, scholar, and opinion writer who has taught leadership in social justice-focused education at Colgate University. Her books include Haunting and the Educational Imagination. Now, her debut full-length poetry collection, The Chessmaster’s Daughter, is available from Cayuga Lake Books. This collection combines lyricism and philosophical inquiry, meditating on the tensions between appreciation

Two Poems from “The Chessmaster’s Daughter” by Barbara Regenspan Read More »