Current and Back Issues

The second edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, edited by Charles Adés Fishman, is a landmark book containing poems by over 200 American poets, including such well-known names as John Ciardi, Jorie Graham, Anthony Hecht, Randall Jarrell, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, Philip Levine, Louis Simpson and Derek Walcott. A number of THT poets are included, among them Fishman, Yala Korwin, Robert Mezey, Christina Pacosz and Sean M. Teaford. Please click here to read a review of the book by THT editor Michael R. Burch.

September 2008: This month we're pleased to be able to shine the THT Spotlight on Arthur Mortensen, a much-published poet, and the webmaster of Expansive Poetry & Music Online.

The Archpoet is the latest poet in our Blasts from the Past series. Not much is known about him, except that he has the coolest name ever, wrote in medieval Latin circa 1165, and seems to have given the modern world one of its first glimpses of the vagabond poet/rogue scholar. He was also quite a heretic, which appeals to us immensely.

Last month we published the short story "Missionaries" by Sally Cook. This month we're back with poetry by Sally Cook, including her take on Newton, Adam, Eve and man's sinful, nay gluttonous!, lust for apples and knowledge. We just wonder which sort of apples, and whose, Adam was really after . . .

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi continues to be in the Spotlight, as we have added several selections from his "Gallery of Ethopaths" to his THT poetry page.

T. Merrill continues to remain in the Spotlight, with more THT exclusives.

We recently had over 10,000 hits on our main page for a single month, which is a new record for THT. It seems someone out there likes us, and we sincerely hope it's you.

August 2008: Joseph Salemi is back, with a second installment of A Gallery of Ethopaths, accompanied by more fine illustrations by Bob Fisk. Once again Salemi plays pugnacious Churchill to every other poet's Neville Chamberlain! Watch the Pit Bull of Poetry take on the Pompadoured Poodles of Poesy! BIFF! BAM! POW! There's more than one Dark Knight intent on saving the world from nefarious Jokers!

Speaking of Bob Fisk, we're pleased to be able to publish "Missionaries" by his wife, Sally Cook. Is "Missionaries" a work of fiction, non-fiction, or something in between? We'll never tell, so you'll have to draw your own conclusions. You can also find "Missionaries" features atop our Mysterious Ways page.

The Archpoet is the latest poet in our Blasts from the Past series. Not much is known about him, except that he has the coolest name ever, wrote in medieval Latin circa 1165, and seems to have given the modern world one of our first glimpses of the vagabond poet/rogue scholar.

And it's our distinct honor and privilege to publish Richard Moore's epic poem "The Mouse Whole" in whole, not in part. Along with the Mouse we invoke the Muses:

Fly in from your Ocean Isles
out in clear ethereal blue;
revive me with giggles and smiles,
and help me with rhyming too;
protect me from errors
and blunders
as I sail through these terrors
and wonders,
and preserve my powers undiminished
until this moustrosity's finished.

May 2008: This month we are pleased as tickled pink punch to be able to publish THT's Second Interview with Richard Moore.

New to the Spotlight this month is Ian Thornley's long poetic work, "Song of a Son of Light."

We are also delighted to be able to feature a second long poetic work, "Blue Beard," by V. Ulea.

T. Merrill continues to remain in the Spotlight, with two more THT exclusives.

April 2008: New to the Spotlight this month is Charles Martin, one of our foremost translators of Latin poetry and a fine poet in his own right. Martin has received the coveted Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets. He has also been awarded the Bess Hokin Award by Poetry and a Pushcart Prize, not to mention having been nominated  for the Pulitzer Prize three times.

Our second new Spotlight poet is Seamus Cassidy, a poet who comes from a heritage of Irish storytellers.

This month we welcome Charles Adés Fishman back to the Spotlight, with two poems about his father that nicely complement his poems about his sister and grandson.

T. Merrill continues to provide us with THT exclusives, and so he remains in the Spotlight.

We have added a new article "Two Tales of the Night Sky" to our Mysterious Ways page. The article contains a short prose piece by Glory Sasikala Franklin and a poem by Harold McCurdy. Mysterious stuff indeed!

Our congratulations to THT poet Rhina Espaillat, who will be the first writer to receive the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award  from Salem State College. Bravo, Rhina!

We have just created a new page, Heresy Hearsay, which will be a forum where poets can freely speak their minds, using salty language or vulgarities if they so choose, on any topic, including things "heretical." We will take as the main planks of our platform two choice sayings:

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.—Walt Whitman

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution. — Wallace Stevens

I once challenged poets to discuss the Big Topics of God, death, the afterlife, eternity and infinity. But now I would raise a more pressing earthly issue: freedom of speech. Do we really believe in it? Do poets practice it? Are we afraid to take on the organized gangs of fundamentalism that threaten daily, even hourly, to take away our treasured freedoms of speech and religion (or non-religion)? Will poets speak up for the oppressed today, as William Blake once spoke up for child chimneysweeps? Well, who is more oppressed in the United States than non-heterosexuals? So where are the thundering words of poets to match the pulpit's hellfire sermons against our oppressed brothers and sisters? Dare we write only about love affairs, flower gardens and tea parties, when the Pope and legions of Protestant pastors say that God considers human life sacred (although according to them he condemned us all to death over an apple), and therefore euthanasia is "not His will"? Yes, I will defend the right of religious-minded people to say whatever screwball things they believe, but it seems of utmost importance to me that poets who believe in such things speak forthrightly for tolerance, compassion and sanity. Do I want to suffer needlessly at the end of my life because Pat Robertson, while taking out time from calling down  asteroids to level communities who don't elect Creationist school boards, may somehow "channel" the "will" of God and decide that I am unfit to determine my own fate? Let God determine my eternal destiny, but if he chooses not to heal me in this life for his ever-inscrutable reasons, why should it take an act of the Supreme Court for me to end my own life, humanely?—Michael R. Burch

March 2008: It is our honor and pleasure to once again shine the THT Spotlight on the work of Dr. Joseph S. Salemi. We have just published two new sections from his A Gallery of Ethopaths, with accompanying illustrations by Bob Fisk. Joe and I are as different as night in day in many ways, but we agree on certain principles that—I'm sorry to say—other publishers of formal poetry seem to be overly shy about, or shying away from, or both. One principle is freedom of speech, which includes the right of mature poets to use mature words. Another principle is the poet's right—indeed his duty—to call a spade a spade, even in the realm of religion, which is all too often the opposite of heavenly. It seems to me that both publishers of poetry and poets themselves have become wishy-washy on the matter of religion. William Blake was no pantywaist when he called Jehovah "Nobodaddy," the "Accuser of the Brethren" and the "Strong Man of the World." As fundamentalists of all cloths turn the world into a battleground, seemingly intent on bringing about Armageddon in their own day, poets and publishers shouldn't be afraid to play Devil's Advocate. Let poets speak their minds freely, and let readers make up their minds freely. That's how freedom of speech should work. If poets and publishers of poetry fear offending readers, they commit the worst of all possible offenses: not having the courage to lift a pen, when millions of young men and women died to gain them that right. While I don't agree with Joe on every count, I'm glad to give him a forum where he can speak his mind and conscience freely.—Michael R. Burch

We've added two new poems by Jack Butler and so he returns to the THT Spotlight.

T. Merrill has provided us with more THT exclusives, and so he remains in the THT  Spotlight.

In conjunction with THT poet/artist/photographer Judy "Joy" Jones we are publishing a new page called The Holocaust of the Homeless. We dedicate it to Joy, and to all the homeless people of the world. I believe it was Auden who said "poetry makes nothing happen." But not so very long ago William Blake wrote very touching poems about little children working as chimneysweeps -- risking life and limb at what amounted to slave labor -- and soon there were no children working as chimneysweeps, or at the very least nowhere near as many as before and decidedly not out in the open. Moreover, thanks at least in part to writers like Blake and Dickens, child labor laws were enacted in England, the United States and other civilized countries, and as a result today our children are allowed to play and learn, as children should, rather than work their fingers to the bone before they're fully formed. No, things are not perfect, but they have improved. I believe Joy's poetry, art and photography will "make everything happen" for the homeless people she loves and for whom she pours out her heart. I remember reading somewhere that Blake saw angels everywhere around him. When I see Joy, I see a human angel. I'm pleased and honored to be able to work with her to make the world aware of The Holocaust of the Homeless. If you have poems, art or photographs that you'd like to submit to the cause, please feel free to send them to me (Mike Burch) at mburch@aocg.com.

Judy Jones recently had the opportunity to write poems and read them for The Gap, the mega-billion-dollar manufacturer, distributer and retailer of apparel. What happens when a saint encounters a conglomeration? We have four poems of hers to share that we believe you'll find illuminating. Be sure to read "recognition," the last poem in the series.

We are pleased to announce a tribute page for Brian Coleman, a young man who befriended a number of Holocaust survivors, including THT poet Yala Korwin, before suffering an untimely death at the age of nineteen. But Brian's thoughtfulness and kindness will not be forgotten, and THT is pleased to be able to help keep his memory alive.

We are delighted to be able to publish "I remember ..." an essay by Urmila Subbarao on the dangers and joys of intolerance and tolerance, respectively.

P. Bloodsworth was born in Columbus, Ohio in November of 1974, upon which she was immediately adopted and taken to be raised on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio, whereafter, other than a rumoured kinship to an Apache shaman known as Goyathlay, information on her background remains as elusive as her somewhat scattered writings, some of which you can read here by clicking her name.

Wallace Stevens is the latest poet in our "Blasts from the Past" series, but by no means the leastest!

February 2008: Judith Werner, our first Spotlight poet this month, lives in Brooklyn Heights and works as a grant writer for Habitat for Humanity. Previously Senior Editor for Rattapallax, she teaches a poetry workshop at Caring Community and has had poems published in many literary magazines and several anthologies. She has won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, The Academy of American Poets Prize, a Breadloaf Writer’s Conference Fellowship, The Lyric’s Best of Issue Prize and Honorable Mentions, the Ronald J. Kemski Prize, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

T. Merrill has provided us with yet a few more THT exclusives, "hot off the pen," and he remains in the THT  Spotlight.

Because Werner and Merrill are both fans of A. E. Housman, we have elected to spotlight Housman's work again this month in our "Blasts from the Past" series. Please be sure to check out Werner's "Post-Modern Glosa," a poem which incorporates lines by Housman.

By the way, it was Merrill who first recommended Werner's work to THT, and then put us in touch with her, so this issue of THT very much bears his stamp, and our approval.

January 2008: Our first Spotlight poet this month is Mary Rae, a widely published poet who was formerly editor of Romantics Quarterly, a literary journal founded by poet Kevin N. Roberts. A graduate of Boston University with a degree in Spanish Language and Literature, Mary Rae is also a composer, artist and translator. Her book, St. John of the Cross: Selected Poems, was published in 1991, and she is currently at work on a revised edition. Samples of her music, poetry, and art can be found at www.maryraemusic.com.

Returning to the Spotlight is T. Merrill, one of THT's most gifted poets. These poems are THT exclusives, so please be sure to check them out.

The latest edition to our Blasts from the Past series is Thomas Wyatt, with an introduction by Jeffery Woodward.

We've also added a page of the Selected Poems of A. E. Housman to our "Blasts from the Past" series. A. E. Housman and Tom Merrill stand opposed to the forces of mindless (or at the very least sometimes unthinking) orthodoxy; in the spirit of freedom and enlightenment, their voices deserve to be heard. As potential wars now face the United States on multiple fronts -- Iraq, Afghanistan, possibly Iran, and now even the Democratic presidential candidates who stridently decry the hawkishness of the Bush administration sit all-to-calmly discussing invading Pakistan -- it behooves us to consider what Housman had to say about war and the young men who die in them. And as the planet's population burgeons, it also behooves us to consider what Merrill has to say on the biblical edict to "be fruitful and multiply." The Bible condones animal sacrifice, slavery, the stoning of children and genocide. Today we gasp aghast when we hear of women being stoned for adultery in Muslim countries. And yet this is the ancient wisdom of our own ancestors, along with "be fruitful and multiply." If we no longer stone our children and women, having put such "wisdom" behind us, isn't it time to reconsider the "wisdom" of parents having children they can't afford to feed and educate?

We have added Laurel Johnson's book review of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust to THT's Essays & Assays page.

December 2007: This month our first Spotlight Poet is Bill Coyle, whose poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including the Hudson Review, The New Criterion, the New Republic, and Poetry. He is a translator from the Swedish, and his versions of the poet Håkan Sandell have appeared in PN Review and Ars Interpres and are forthcoming in the anthology The Other Side of Landscape.

Our second Spotlight Poet this month is Tom Riley. Riley was born in 1958 and grew up in Western New York. He was educated at Hartwick College and at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches English literature and Classical languages in Napa, California, where he lives with his wife, Mary, a stepdaughter, three small children, his in-laws, and a timid Belgian shepherd. He exercises way too much for a man his age and enjoys the potation of whiskey, cursing his enemies, and shooting the bow. He is not well practiced in the art of smiling. He is, however, well practiced in the art of poetry.

Our third Spotlight Poet is Bruce Weigl. Weigl enlisted in the Army shortly after his 18th birthday and spent four years in the service, serving in Vietnam from December 1967 to December 1968, where he received the Bronze Star. He has contributed various well-renowned poems for over 25 years. Many of his poems are inspired by the time he spent in the U.S. Army and Vietnam. In The Circle of Hanh he writes, "The war took away my life and gave me poetry in return ... the fate the world has given me is to struggle to write powerfully enough to draw others into the horror." In addition to writing his own poetry, Weigl translated poems of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers captured during war with Thanh T. Nguten of the Joiner Research Center. Weigl's first award was a prize from the American Academy of Poets in 1979. He has since received two Pushcart Prizes, a Patterson Poetry Prize, and a Yaddo Foundation Fellowship. He was awarded the Bread Loaf Fellowship in Poetry in 1981 and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 for Arts and Creative Writing. He was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his book of poems Song of Napalm.

We're pleased as punch to be able to publish a new poem, "A Slice of Life" by T. Merrill, which is based on an incident that occurred recently in Bucharest. Merrill's poem will undoubtedly make our male readers wince, in between grins and guffaws.

George Eliot is our newest "Blast from the Past." Like so many great poets and writers, she seems to have been light years ahead of her time. Esther Cameron, editor of The Deronda Review, a journal which takes its name from a novel Eliot novel, explains why ...

Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was the Poet Laureate of England, yet "his writing suffered the singular and ironic misfortune of winning broad public favor at the expense of understanding."

Our Holocaust Poetry pages now rank in the top ten with Google. If you haven't read the work of Miklós Radnóti, Wladyslaw Szlengel and the other Holocaust poets we've published, then as Mel Fisher said just before he discovered a gold-laden galleon's gleaming treasure, "Today is the day." Once again, we'd like to express our appreciation to Yala Korwin, Esther Cameron, Charles Adés Fishman, and the other fine poets and translators who have helped us assemble one of the finest collections of Holocaust Poetry, Art and Essays on the Internet.

The Deronda Review is the new name of the erstwhile Neovictorian/Cochlea, one of our favorite poetry journals. Edited by the lovely, multi-talented Esther Cameron, The Deronda Review will remain a veritable sun of poetic energy and light, and we encourage our visitors to visit the TDR website and to subscribe to the paper-and-ink journal, which has published work by a number of THT poets, including Zyskandar Jaimot, Richard Moore, Jennifer Reeser, Joe Ruggier, Joseph Salemi and Noah Hoffenberg. Mindy Aber Barad is TDR's co-editor for Israel.

We have added several new poems to Esther Cameron's poetry page. They're at the bottom, but please be sure to read the ones you haven't read lately, on your way down.

I have started a new, somewhat mystical page entitled Sandra Jane Burch: A Voice Beyond. Sandra Jane Burch is the name of the elder of my two sisters (I'm the oldest of three siblings); she inherited it from our aunt of the same name, who died in 1955, three years before I was born. Since my sister goes by Sandra, I will call our aunt of the same name Jane, in order to avoid confusion. Until very recently, all I knew about Jane was that she had died in a flood as a young girl. But recently I came across a folder containing her schoolwork and certain other of her personal effects, and to my surprise and delight I discovered that she was a poet, as I and my sisters are. In her folder I found two poems, which I will share before delving further into her story. I believe the first of the two poems is her original work. Jane died while in the fourth grade, and I think her poem is a very nice one for the age at which she wrote it, or for any age:

Cherrys are red;
Christmas is white,
Stars are yellow,
Snow is white.

To read the full story, a continuing work in process, please click here.

November 2007: This month we're pleased to shine the THT Spotlight on the poetry of George Held. Many of our readers will recognize his work from The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The New Formalist, Commonweal, and other journals of note. George has a wonderful personal touch on poetic portraits like "Elise" and "Honey," and one cannot help but be impressed with his ability to work Joe DiMaggio, Bill Gates, W. B. Yeats and Euterpe into a single poem ("Finding My Way").

Jeff Holt is a therapist in Denton, Texas whose poems have been published in William Baer’s Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, The Formalist, Measure, The Evansville Review, Pivot,  Iambs & Trochees, The Texas Review, Rattappallax, Cumberland Poetry Review, Sparrow, and elsewhere.

W. Riley Munday--Riley Munday to family and friends--was a native Mississippian and a graduate of Mississippi College and the New Orleans Baptist Seminary. He was a Baptist minister, humorist, after-dinner speaker, husband, father, grandfather, and published poet. His two long-play humor records, "Smile, Southern Style" and "Seventh Sense" both went into at least four pressings. His poetry chapbook The Beginning Tree was published in 1971.

Robert Bridges (1844-1930), the latest poet in our "Blasts from the Past" series, was the Poet Laureate of England, yet "his writing suffered the singular and ironic misfortune of winning broad public favor at the expense of understanding."

Our Holocaust Poetry pages now rank in the top ten with Google. If you haven't read the work of Miklós Radnóti, Wladyslaw Szlengel and the other Holocaust poets we've published, there's no time like today. Once again, we'd like to express our appreciation to Yala Korwin, Esther Cameron, Charles Adés Fishman, and the other fine poets who have helped us assemble one of the finest collections of Holocaust Poetry, Art and Essays on the Internet.

Please click here for a book review of Richard Moore's Buttoned Into History, reviewed by Eleanor Goodman.

September 2007: This month we have a special article, "Flying the Flag on 9-11" that was written by THT editor Mike Burch in response to an email invitation to fly the American on September 11th in order to remember and honor our fallen dead.

We have added a number of new poems to the page of T. Merrill, one of THT's ablest poets and greatest benefactors. These poems are THT "exclusives," for which we are grateful.

For the first time in some time, we've added new lyrics (these by Leonard Cohen) to our Rock Jukebox page.

A'isha Esha Rafeeq-Swan has worked extensively with HIV, substance abuse, homelessness and advocacy groups. Her causes also include the end to violence and racism, and the promotion of peace, love, well-being and unity for all. She has been published by Street Spirit and is the co-producer of The Bones of the Homeless Will Rise. We're pleased to be able to publish her tribute poem  "Ode to Judy Jones." Judy (Joy) Jones is an artist, photographer, poet, and storyteller with fascinating and sometimes out-and-out miraculous tales to tell of her work among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor."

August 2007: T. Merrill is a gifted poet, painter and photographer who is a THT Spotlight Poet for the second time. He's been a frequent contributor to our "Blasts from the Past" series and has aided and abetted THT in more ways than we can possibly remember or hope to repay.

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi remains a Spotlight poet, and we've added three fine poems to his poetry page which were not there last month. He considers these poems among his best, and we agree. He also has the latest addition to our Essays & Assays page.

When I started THT's Mysterious Ways page, it never occurred to me that THT would be involved in creating miracles, not just reporting them. But when I finally began to pray prayers of compassion for others only three years ago, at the not-so-tender age of 46, suddenly mysterious things did begin to happen, especially when other poets and artists were involved. The latest blessing occurred when I was praying with for Helen Bar-Lev and Johnmichael Simon, both THT poets. Johnmichael was about to undergo major surgery and Helen had asked me to pray for specific things to go well with the surgery. I promised that I would, but I added that I always pray for miracles (on the principle that it never hurts to ask). In any case, Helen's account of what happened is on this page, along with a sketch of what she calls "Genie-Angels" and a touching poem she wrote about the event.

What makes this all the more mysterious is the fact that I have sitting in front of my desk (so that I can beam smiles at it frequently) a very similar photo that was taken on March 9, 2004. I had been praying for a poet who, at that time, we believed to be on his deathbed. For some reason I began praying for him to see "the Glory of the Lord," and I'm still not sure why those particular words came to me. At that time, I was quite deluded about the nature of the glory of the Lord, because I thought it was some type of fearsome Cosmic power rather than simply Divine Love, as I do now, but nevertheless something wonderful happened, which changed the lives of at least five people: myself, three poets and the artist/photographer who caught something extraordinary on film. In my framed Great White Light photo, two male poets are bending like human angels over the ailing poet. Seeming to come, not from behind or above them, but from within the circle formed by their bodies, is a pure white incandescent light. In the upper left- and right-hand corners of the photo are two golden objects which (I like to think) are the edges of the gates of heaven flung wide open. The photographer later told me that the room was dim, with only a single small wall light, and that the flash didn't seem to go off, but "fizzled." Imagine her surprise when the picture came out perfect, with the three men looking for all the world like angels. And two were indeed angels of mercy, for they had come to pay their respects that night. The woman who took the photo was truly an angel of mercy, watching over the bedridden poet when his family would not, and he could barely lift his hand to sign a Valentine's card, much less write a poem. That night changed my life, because I saw what prayers can do, and I seemed to leap and bound beyond religious dogma into a realm of compassion where dreams come true. One of the poets and the artist/photographer recently were married, and make a smashingly lovely couple. The other poet told me just a few nights ago that he keeps the Great White Light picture hanging by his fireplace. The poet we were praying for recovered, was able to leave the hospital, and resumed writing poetry. Of course such things are matters of faith, but even skeptics and critics of religion like Mark Twain have reported prophetic visions and moments of clairvoyance. It seems to me that we can touch each other in ways that go beyond the physical laws that govern the universe, and even if I'm mistaken, it never hurts to be compassionate, to encourage, and to be encouraged. [I haven't been able to get permission to publish the Great White Light photograph, because the distinguished poet is in his bedclothes and doesn't prefer to be paraded around the Internet in such attire. But two THT poets and a THT artist/photographer would back me up in court, I expect.]

I have a third "mysterious ways" work of art, which is personal in nature, and seemingly an answer to a personal vision. Perhaps I will be able to reveal its full meaning in time; I hope so. It's a photograph snapped by the Russian poet/photographer Vera Zubarev (aka V. Ulea) while she was vacationing in Rome. Vera said that she "knew" the photo was for me, and when I saw it, I was flabbergasted. I had recently adopted the Archangel Michael as my person hero, after reading how he's renowned for offering all men mercy on their deathbeds, and for always being the advocate of man through all his many millennia of suffering, and for being "Wonderful and Glorious" in a warm-hearted way, without being arrogant (although I understand he's a bit vain about his wings). Before I "retired" to my current position as poet-editor (although I still have my day job at the software company I own and manage), playing pool was my pastime and obsession, and in Vera's photo the Roman Angel looks exactly as if it's readying a pool cue to "shoot at the stars," which is the way I feel about my prayers. It's mysterious indeed to look around my office and see beautiful works of art that seem to be the direct result of prayer. If we put religious dogma aside and touch the heart of Divine Love by uniting in compassionate prayers with and for each other, we may yet make the world a better, more mysterious place (especially if God doesn't have to bow out because one person is praying for another person's downfall). -- Michael R. Burch

And speaking of things mysterious, we're pleased to once again Spotlight the lovely, alluring work of homeless advocate Judy (Joy) Jones. Judy Jones is an artist, photographer, poet, and storyteller with fascinating and sometimes out-and-out miraculous tales to tell of her work among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor."  In her own words, "Each of my paintings has a story. Since I haven't an immediate family, the whole world has become my home and every person I paint becomes my 'brother, father, sister, mother'. I become intimately involved with the person before me. I started painting for the first time at the age of 33 from the confines of a hospital bed after a near death experience. The moment my paintbrushes touched the paper I knew my only purpose on the earth was to paint. Painting is my way to say I love you."

July 2007: "The Totems of Poetry" by Dr. Joseph S. Salemi is the latest addition to our Essays & Assays page. Dr Salemi is also our Spotlight poet for the month of July.

The latest poet in our "Blast from the Past" series is Thomas Campion (1567-1620). His page features an introduction by Jeffrey Woodward.

Johnmichael Simon started writing poetry seriously as retirement age arrived, after meeting his life partner, Helen Bar-Lev, an artist who is also a THT poet. Together they have collaborated on three published books, and Johnmichael has won or placed highly in a number of poetry contests, including a first and a third prize in an international competition, the Reuben Rose. He has also been published widely in anthologies and internet publications.

June 2007: Christina Pacosz, our latest Spotlight Poet, has been writing and publishing prose and poetry for nearly half a century and has several books of poetry, the most recent, Greatest Hits, 1975-2001 (Pudding House, 2002). Her work has appeared recently in I-70 Review, Jane’s Stories III, Women Writing Across Boundaries and a poem has been accepted for publication on-line by Pemmican.

Louise Bogan is the latest poet in our "Blasts from the Past" series. Bogan has long been one of my favorite poets, and it's a shame and travesty that she isn't better known than she is today. On the brighter side, we hope to soon have an excellent essay by Jeffrey Woodward on Bogan's poem "The Mark," so please re-visit her page when time allow. -- MRB

Speaking of Jeffrey Woodward, we're pleased to be able to hyperlink to his essay on Amy Clampitt published by Umbrella. This essay also appears on THT's Essays & Assays page.

Woodward has also created a valuable resource for poets entitled "An Annotated Checklist of English Versification," which appears on The Barefoot Muse. 

Gordon Ramel is a scientist who has "come to poetry as a scientist." His university degrees are in ecology. He won a first poetry prize at the age of 14, but didn't really find "time to water the seeds of creativity" until he was 43. His poem "Darkness" is based on what might be called a "waking vision," and it seems prophetic both in its origin and in its message.

May 2007: Ezra Pound is the subject of the latest installment of our "Blasts from the Past" series, and his page kicks off with an introduction by T. Merrill, a frequent THT contributor.

Our first Spotlight poet this month, Janet Kenny, left a good life as a painter and singer in New Zealand to sing professionally in England then escaped to Sydney, Australia. There she was active in the anti-nuclear-weapons movement and jointly wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry. She now lives by the sea in Queensland. She has published essays and poems in print and many online journals including Mi Poesias, The New Formalist, Avatar, The Susquehanna Quarterly, The Raintown Review, and Iambs & Trochees. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is included in the international anthology The Book of Hope. She shares a book of bird poems, Passing Through, with the American poet Jerry H. Jenkins. She has illustrated a book of humorous poems, The Bad Habits of Little Boys, by the Irish poet Jim Hayes.

Debbie Amirault Camelin, our second Spotlight poet, lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and three children. She is an eight generation Acadian with roots in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her poem "Intimidation," the winning poem in the 2006 Tom Howard Poetry Contest, was inspired by a real-life event on a journey through South Africa in 2001.

Leland Jamieson, our third Spotlight poet for May, lives and writes in East Hampton, Connecticut. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC at Chapel Hill. Although he has been a scribbler of verse since he was a teen, starting in 2002 he began to devote himself to formal poetry. His goal is to tell stories and present vignettes relevant to today’s readers. "Teaching myself to write in rhyme and meter, and committing myself to that endeavor," he says, "has been the most liberating experience I have ever enjoyed in my writing life. What rhyme and meter most liberated for me was feeling, and with it fresh insight into people (including myself), and into the nature of the world we call home."

April 2007: Maureen Cannon died at her home in Wyckoff, N.J. in January 2007.  She had published over one thousand poems, most of which were written "in under a minute." We are pleased to be able to publish a number of poems by Maureen Cannon, provided to us by Light Quarterly editor John Mella.

Sheema Kalbasi is an award-winning Iranian-born poet, a human rights activist, a literary translator, the Director of Dialogue of Nations through Poetry in Translation, the Director of Poetry of the Iranian Women Project, and a passionate and outspoken defender of ethnic and religious minority rights. She writes of love, loss, exile, and brave women who protect their children and defuse hate through their very existence. Kalbasi lives in the U.S. now, but honors her Iranian heritage.

March 2007: This month we're pleased to feature C. L. (Cynthia) Toups as a new Spotlight Poet. Toups is a self-employed editor and technical writer with a B.A. in History from Loyola University New Orleans. Her love of history and music fuels her poetic themes along with her south Louisiana roots.

Our second new Spotlight Poet is David Leightty, whose second chapbook, Civility at the Flood Wall was published in 2002; his first, Cumbered Shapes, was published in 1998. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Blue Unicorn, The Cumberland Poetry Review; The Epigrammatist, Light, The Lyric, Phase and Cycle, Riverrun, Slant, Sparrow, Spoon River Anthology, SPSM&H, and The New Compass.  In 2003 Leightty founded Scienter Press (www.scienterpress.org), a small poetry press.

Our third new Spotlight Poet is Helen Bar-Lev. Since 1976 Helen has devoted herself to art: painting, teaching and writing poetry. From 1989 until 2001 she was a member of the Safad Artists’ Colony in the Upper Galilee where she had her own gallery. Today she paints and teaches in Jerusalem. To date Bar-Lev has participated in 80 exhibitions, including 30 one-person shows. Her poems and paintings have appeared in many online journals such as The Other Voices International Project, The Coffee Press Journal, Boheme Magazine, The Poetry Bridge, River Bones Press and also in print anthologies such as Meeting of the Minds Journal, Voices Israel Anthologies, Manifold Magazine of New Poetry, Lucidity Poetry Journal and others.  She is the global correspondent in Israel for the Poetry Bridge and Editor-in-Chief of the Voices Israel annual Anthology.

Our fourth new Spotlight Poet is Yelena Dubrovina, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia where she received her Master Degree in Library Science. She left Russia in 1978, and since 1979 she has resided in Philadelphia. Yelena is the author of two books of poetry, “Preludes to the Rain” and “Beyond the Line of No Return,” and of many literary essays. In addition, she co-authored a novel “In Search of Van Dyck” with Dr. Hilary Koprowski. From 1983 to 1991, she was on the editorial board of the poetry and art almanac Vstrechi/Encounters.

Our fifth new Spotlight Poet is Jeffrey Woodward, whose poems and articles have been published widely in North America, Europe and Asia in various periodicals, including Acumen (England), Blue Unicorn, Candelabrum (England), The Christian Century, Connecticut River Review, Envoi (Wales),  Gryphon, Haiku Scotland, Hrafnhoh (Wales), International Poetry Review, Invisible City, Lines Review (Scotland), The Lyric, Nebo, Piedmont Literary Review, Plains Poetry Journal, Poem, Re: Arts & Letters, Second Coming, South Coast Poetry Journal, Staple (England), Studio (Australia), and many others.

We've added a new poem, "A Child of the Millennium," by Charles Adés Fishman that we like so much we've added it to three pages: Fishman's poetry page, which you can reach by clicking here, and our For Darfur and In Peace's Arms (Not War's) pages, which we are continually updating (and which we hope you'll visit often).

We have also added "Who knows one?" by by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, "Displaced Persons Camp in Darfur" by Yala Korwin,  and "What for Darfur?" by Ed Miller to the For Darfur page.

And we've added a fine new poem, "Unwithered," to the poetry page of T. Merrill.

We are pleased to announce that the complete work of Nadia Anjuman (Nadja Anjoman) is now available in Farsi at: www.entesharate-iran.com.

February 2007: W. H. (William Henry) Davies is the fourth installment in our "Blasts from the Past" series, and his page kicks off with an introduction by Davies admirer T. Merrill, a frequent THT contributor. Davies came from a poor family, didn’t go to college, was "tossed out of school at an early age for having organized a little gang of school acquaintances for the purpose of robbing local businesses,"  and ended up becoming a hobo, a career that ended when he attempted to jump a train, fell, and lost a foot under the train’s wheels. This unfortunate accident (for Davies) became a fortuitous incident (for the world), as Davies went on to become a writer of considerable distinction, publishing more than twenty volumes of poetry and several prose works, most notably The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908).

Our fifth installment of "Blasts from the Past," once again with an introduction by T. Merrill, is Conrad Aiken, one of the sweetest singers among American poets.

Mary E. Moore, our third Spotlight poet this month, earned a Ph.D. in Psychology at Rutgers University, then an M.D. at Temple University’s School of Medicine. She went on to teach at Temple and the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she headed the Division of Rheumatology. Dr. Moore only started to write poetry seriously after her retirement. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Möbius, Raintown Review, The Eclectic Muse, The Mid-America Poetry Review, and in several other journals and anthologies.

We're pleased as tickled pink punch to announce that T. S. Kerrigan now appears on Wikipedia. A well-deserved honor for a fine gentleman and one of THT's favorite contemporary poets.

We have added new poems to our For Darfur page, including one by THT poet Zyskandar Jaimot, and we continue to welcome submissions.

January 2007: Thanks to T. Merrill, we're bringing in the New Year with a bang with the poetry of Harold Monro, in our third installment of "Blasts from the Past." As Merrill tells us in his introduction, "T. S. Eliot singled out Monro as one of the two poets 'of a somewhat older generation than mine' whose poetry was closer to being 'the real right thing.' (The other was Yeats.)  In summing up his high opinion of Monro, Eliot predicted that his poetry would '... remain because, like every other good poet, he has not simply done something better than anyone else, but done something that no one else has done at all.' Which brings to mind a question: who today has heard of Harold Monro?" Well, at least you have now, if not before!

We're please to shine the THT spotlight on a number of new poems we've just added to the poetry page of Michael Cantor.

Melanie Houle was the first featured poet in The Raintown Review, and now she's a THT spotlight poet. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Lyric,  Texas Poetry Journal, California Quarterly, Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Iconoclast, Timber Creek Review, The Rockford Review, The Aurorean, Mobius, and Pearl.

Nelson Mandela is an eloquent spokesman for Africa and for all humanity, and he is someone who not only "talks the talk" but definitively "walks the walk." Mandela's page close with a tribute in which Mohammed Ali explains why Mandela is his personal hero. 

Joseph McDonough, the latest addition to our Holocaust index, is a stockbroker who lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Having worked in the World Trade Center prior to 9-11, he began writing as a way to disconnect from this monumental tragedy. He soon began writing poetry of "witness," as a way to memorialize victims of terrorism and holocausts. He has been published in several literary journals, most recently The Penwood Review, and he will be a featured poet in the January 2007 issues of Poetry Life and Times (England) and Stylus Poetry Journal (Australia).

December 2006: This month, just in time to usher in the holiday season, we're pleased to be able to spotlight the work of Mary Malone, thanks to the efforts of her good friend and advocate, T. Merrill, who has written a touching and amusing introduction for her THT poetry page.

And we're pleased to be able to shine the THT spotlight for a second time on Annie Finch, who is well known, and rightly so, in formal circles. In addition to adding some new "Annie Finch originals," we have also added three of her translations: two of the French Renaissance poet Louise Labé, and one of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, which she co-translated with George Kline.

T. Merrill has also helped us kick off our new "Blasts from the Past" section by compiling some of the best lesser-known poems of one of the great ascended masters of poetry: A. E. Housman.

We have added a new poem of Thanksgiving to the poetry page of Takashi “Thomas” Tanemori, and we have also added this poem, appropriately enough, to our Thanksgiving page.

If you're a writer of poetry or prose, please note THT's calls for submissions for our For Darfur and In Peace's Arms (Not War's) pages, in the second paragraph at the top of this page.

November 2006: This month we re-welcome T. S. Kerrigan back to the THT Spotlight. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart by one of our favorite journals, The Raintown Review, for his poem "The Dust of Stars." With the sheer audacity of a true poet, Kerrigan, after agreeing to allow us to publish "The Dust of Stars," submitted a version of the poem that bore only a faint resemblance to the Pushcart-nominated poem! We tip our hats to him, and to the poem.

Marly Youmans is the second returning poet in the Spotlight this month, and we've added three new poems to her page that you won't want to miss. Her poems sometimes sparkle as though touched with a magic wand, bringing us close to the Otherworld, so prepare to be enchanted!

This month's first new Spotlight poet is Eve Anthony Hanninen. Eve’s work has appeared or will appear in Mannequin Envy, Southern Hum, Nisqually Delta Review, ForPoetry, The Reality Box, Red Letter Press, and elsewhere. She edits The Centrifugal Eye, an online poetry journal.

Our second Spotlight poet is Martin Itzkowitz, who teaches in the Department of Writing Arts at Rowan University. He has served as non-fiction editor and executive editor of Asphodel, a literary journal associated with the department's graduate program. Having begun writing poetry shortly after the Flood, Martin has published in various venues, most recently in The Lyric and Moment.

Robin Ouzman Hislop, our third Spotlight poet, was born in the United Kingdom and has also lived in Scotland, Scandinavia, The East and Spain. He now lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK. His work has appeared in  Dawn Millennium Anthology and Crystal Dawn Anthology published by Kedco Studios. His anthology After the Cave the Comet appeared in 2004. He started as a resident poet with Poetry Life & Times in January 2005 and took over its editorship together with Spanish poetess Amparo Arrospide from Sara Russell in May 2006.

We have also added two new poems--the first dedicated to Primo Levy, the second a plea for Israel to be "merciful, but strong"--to Yala Korwin's poetry page.

As many THT readers are aware, THT has been actively "taking sides" in the confrontations between the United States and Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. We're taking the side of brotherhood and peace, as our In Peace's Arms page attests. Recently, Dr. Mahnaz Badihian was kind enough to translate THT editor Michael R. Burch's poem "Brother Iran" into Farsi. If you'd like to see what a formal English poem looks like in Farsi, just click the hyperlinked title of the poem.

Call for submissions: Neil Harding McAlister is looking for rhyming, metrical poetry for a forthcoming collection of poems for children, ages 8 to 13. Detailed submission guidelines are found at: www.durham.net/~neilmac/children.htm.

October 2006: This month's Spotlight poet, Alfred Nicol, is the latest (but probably not the last and certainly not the least) of the Powow River Poets to be published by THT. Nichol edited the Powow River Anthology, published by Ocean Publishers in 2006, and was the recipient of the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for his first book of poems, Winter Light, published by The University of Evansville Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Formalist, Measure, Commonweal, The New England Review, and other journals. Several of his poems have been anthologized in Contemporary Poetry of New England and in Kiss and Part. The fourth of nine installments of his long poem, “Persnickety Ichabod’s Rhyming Diary” appeared in Light Quarterly.

September 2006: This month's Spotlight Poet is Jack Foley. His poetry books include Letters/Lights—Words for Adelle, Gershwin, Exiles, Adrift (nominated for a BABRA Award), and Greatest Hits 1974-2003 (published by Pudding House Press, a by-invitation-only series). His critical books include the companion volumes, O Powerful Western Star (winner of the Artists Embassy Literary/Cultural Award 1998-2000) and Foley’s Books: California Rebels, Beats, and Radicals. His radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. on Berkeley, California station KPFA and is available at the KPFA web site. His column, “Foley’s Books,” appears in the online magazine The Alsop Review.

While our focus has almost always been on contemporary poets, other than on our Masters page and other topical pages, we are always ready to make an exception whenever an exception is merited. This month we are making such an exception by publishing the lyrics of John Dowland, famed throughout Europe as "the English Orpheus" for his artistry and skill as the greatest lutenist of his day (1563-1626).

Mary Cresswell lives in New Zealand, where she is a self-employed technical writer and editor. She has been published in Light Quarterly, Tucumcari Literary Review, Landfall, Glottis, Tamba, and elsewhere.

We are also pleased to be able to add three new poems to the poetry page of Terese Coe. 

August 2006: David Alpaugh’s poetry, fiction, drama and criticism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Exquisite Corpse, The Formalist, Modern Drama, Poetry, Twentieth Century Literature, The Literature of Work, and California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present. His collection Counterpoint won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and his chapbooks have been published by Coracle Books and Pudding House Publications. Alpaugh operates Small Poetry Press, a chapbook design and printing service, and edits its Select Poets Series.  He is well known in poetry circles for his controversial thesis of The Professionalization of Poetry, which he defended at the AWP 2004 Convention in Chicago.

James Bobrick is also featured this month, and we'll let him describe his early poethood in his own illuminative words: "Though from the Northeast I was sent to a boarding school in Southern California. I was an indifferent student but was determined to pass the sophomore English final, which would consist entirely of quotes from Palgrave's The Golden Treasury. So on a flawless spring night I stayed up till dawn, increasingly enraptured, reading poem after poem. During that night my life changed. I knew--whatever else I did--that I had to write poems and have persisted ever since." His work has appeared in many magazines here and abroad, including Candelabrum, The Cumberland Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, Slant, and The Worcester Review.

Ralph O. Cunningham has published three books: Lovesongs and Others by Fiddlehead Poetry Books, and No Continuing City and Mirrors of Memory by Multicultural Books.

July 2006: It's always a pleasure when we have new, never-before-seen-in-English translations by Yala Korwin, but these translations are indeed special -- the only two remaining poems of her father, Salomon N. Meisels, who died at the hands of Hitler's thugs, and yet through these two utterly lovely poems lives eternally and shines all the more brightly. These, in my opinion, are poems worth of Rumi and Hafiz, i.e., immortal works. -- MRB

Bronislawa Wajs, also known as Papusza, the Romani word for "doll", was an unusual child, even for a Gypsy child. She learned how to read and write by stealing chickens from Polish villages! To learn how she pullet-ed this off, and why she had to, just clicking her hyperlinked name (or nickname).

Daniel Waters was born in New Jersey, grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, earned his B.A. from Wesleyan
University, and has been a jack-of-many-trades ever since. His poetry has been a long-running staple of the Vineyard Gazette, has appeared monthly in Yankee magazine for the last decade, and can be heard daily on WCAI, the Cape and Islands' NPR station. His collection "Needing Winter" was the 2005 winner of the Westmeadow Press Chapbook Contest, and his sonnet "Jellyfish" won first prize in the 2006 Newburyport Art Association Poetry Contest.

Andrey Kneller was born in Moscow, Russia. At the age of ten, his family moved to start a new life in America, where Kneller was quickly able to learn English. Kneller first began to write poetry when he was thirteen years old, and has since written hundreds of poems. He has also translated poetry by Aleksander Pushkin, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Vysotsky, and other Russian poets.

Federico Garcia Lorca’s Views on  Poetry and War consists of two illuminating excerpts from the book Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson.

"Are Women Underrepresented in the Small Press?" a dueling essay by Charles P. Ries and Ellaraine Lockie is an interesting back-and-forth question-and-answer debate about the problem, if it exists, of women being less published than men by the small presses.

June 2006: Jerzy Ficowski, the friend of Jews and Gypsies, died at the age of 82 on May 9, 2006 in Warsaw, Poland. According to an obituary, his only novel, Waiting for the Dog to Sleep, recently found its way into the English language. The copies arrived at Ficowski's house just two weeks before his death. Having witnessed the genocide of the Gypsies during WWII, Ficowski became one of their few translators. And if not for Ficowski, the work of Bruno Schulz, the great Polish Jewish writer, would have been lost. In honor of an extraordinary gentleman, we are pleased to be able to publish English translations of five of his poems, including a never-before-seen poem, "A Prayer to the Holy Louse."

Miklós Radnóti is considered one of the foremost 20th-century Hungarian poets. He was born in Budapest into a Jewish family in 1909. In 1944 he was deported to a compulsory labor camp at a copper mine near Bor, Yugoslavia. As the Russian army approached, the concentration camps in Yugoslavia were evacuated and Radnóti and 3,200 of his fellow internees were led on a forced march through Yugoslavia and Hungary. He was shot to death in November near the West Hungarian village of Abda, along with 21 other prisoners who, like Radnóti, were too weak to walk. The mass grave in which they were buried was exhumed after the war and Radnóti's last poems, describing incidents of the march, were found in his trench coat pocket. Radnóti's posthumous collection, Tajtékos ég (Clouded Sky) contains odes to his wife, letters, and poetic fragments. "He framed poetic innovation in the pattern of the lyrical tradition, combining the classical forms of the ancients with modern sensibilities. Essentially, the more chaotic and barbaric the age [became], the tighter and more refined became his poems' designs. Some poems, cast in ancient meters, ring with prophetic power. Others, in delicate invented forms, create the most exquisite crystalline tones. They produce magic, conjuring up the unprecedented without becoming obscure." -- Zsuzsanna Ozsváth

Harold Grier McCurdy remains a THT featured poet for the month of June. Thanks to the continuing efforts of T. Merrill, who month after month has generously aided and abetted our efforts to find contemporary poetry of a high order, we have been able to add several new poems to McCurdy's page.

Our newest endeavor, In Peace's Arms, is now in full swing. The purpose of this page is to encourage the world to seek peace's arms, not war's. Your contributions to, and suggestions for, this page will be greatly appreciated. Please email them to Mike Burch. And please visit this page often, as we will be updating it on a regular basis. We will also be working with a small team of Iranian, Afghani and (hopefully) Iraqi poets and translators to find and publish the best work available to us. But poetry from all over the world is welcome, as long as it conveys wisdom and has the ability to bless. -- MRB

May 2006: We are pleased to kick off a new artistic endeavor this month: In Peace's Arms. The purpose of this page is to encourage the world to seek peace's arms, not war's. The way we will encourage the world to do this is, of course, through poetry, literature and art. Your contributions to, and suggestions for, this page will be greatly appreciated. Please email them to Mike Burch. And please visit this page often, as we will be updating it on a regular basis. We are particularly interested in translations of Iranian poetry, and will be working with a small team of Iranian translators to find and publish the best Iranian work available to us. -- MRB

This month's featured poet, Eunice de Chazeau, may be one of the wonders of the literary world that you haven't heard of, unless you're a longtime subscriber to The Lyric or similar journals. Thanks to the efforts of T. Merrill, we're pleased to be able to introduce, or re-introduce, our readers to a contemporary poet of considerable merit.

Richard Vallance is a poet, translator, editor and publisher who is well know in formal and haiku circles for his passion, exuberance, energy and outright damn hard work on behalf of poetry. Like Esther Cameron and Joe Ruggier (and THT's editor when he's not slacking off or catnapping), Richard Vallance is a poet who wears many hats and makes things happen. It's a pleasure and an honor to welcome him and his poetry to THT's pages.

Another poet's pseudonym, Noam D. Plum has himself placed work in several publications, most frequently Light Quarterly. He recently won $500 from The Country Mouse, making him a much more successful breadwinner than the poet for whom he fronts! (Which makes us wonder who his wife would pick, if push came to shove.)

Harold Grier McCurdy, was the Kenan Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. McCurdy was an inspiring teacher and a published poet. He authored basic textbooks in the area of personality. Early in his career at UNC-CH he carried out a series of detailed, statistical analyses on the texts of William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser in an effort to resolve several puzzling issues of authorship involving these two poets. His data led him to conclude that these works were in fact the product of two different writers. Following up on these analyses, McCurdy carried out a more extensive investigation of the personality of Shakespeare that was published by Yale University Press in 1953. This work was followed by similar studies of D. H. Lawrence through his fiction and by extensive statistical analyses of the various characters appearing in the writings of two of the Bronte sisters, Emily and Charlotte. Professor McCurdy retired from the faculty of UNC-CH in 1971 but continued writing poetry and an occasional article for the New Yorker. He died at his home in Chapel Hill in November, 1999, and is greatly missed by his many admirers.

Mahnaz Badihian is an Iranian poet and translator with a passion and talent for English poetry.

We're pleased to announce that T. S. Kerrigan's new book The Shadow Sonnets and other poems is available from Scienter Press and can be ordered at www.scienterpress.org.

April 2006: Jack Butler is a THT featured poet for a second time.  He says of himself, "I am a noise-scarred singer, but by god I still hold the true note." That's no idle boast: his poetry will add multiple exclamation marks to anything anyone might say about him or his work. Jack Butler is simply one of the best poets writing today, and if you haven't read "For Her Surgery" or "Electricity" before, you have missed out, until now.  Get back into the loop of poetry sparking like a live wire by clicking here.

Rose Kelleher is one helluva poet,
and we want you to know it.
(Don't dare miss her villanelle
on the perilous charms of the Devil!)

Agnes Wathall is a poet impossible to find on the Internet ... until now! We dunnitagain, doggonit. Our sincerest thanks to Tom Merrill for bringing her work to our attention. Her "Sea Fevers" is a poem we wouldn't mind being shipwrecked with.

We're pleased to be able to publish another of Yala Korwin's fine translations of the poetry of Wladyslaw Szlengel. The title of the latest addition to Szlengel's page is "New Holiday," and if you haven't visited his page before, you really should. In fact, we insist! (Nicely, of course).

Sean M. Teaford won the 2004 Veterans for Peace Poetry Contest and has had over 40 poems published (or scheduled to be published) in The Endicott Review, The Aurorean, Spare Change, and elsewhere. He will have two poems from his book of poems, Kaddish Diary, about Janusz Korczak and the children he nurtured and protected during the Holocaust, in the revised edition of Charles Adés Fishman’s anthology Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust.

Freddy Niagara Fonseca is a talented multi-lingual poet, and is also a mover and shaker on the Iowa poetry scene, where he hosts the popular and innovative Candlelight Reading Series. His poetry has appeared in three of our favorite journals: Pivot, The Eclectic Muse, and The Neovictorian/Cochlea.

CarrieAnn Thunell is an artist, photographer, poet, columnist, interviewer and book reviewer whose poetry has appeared in some of our favorite journals, including The Lyric and The Neovictorian/Cochlea. We admire her for "wearing many hats" and helping advance the art of others (two things we've been known to do ourselves).

And last but certainly not least, we're pleased to be able to introduce the no-nonsense poetry of Juleigh Howard-Hobson, whose work is making increasing waves in Formalist circles, including The Raintown Review, edited by last month's featured poet, Harvey Stanbrough.

March 2006: This month's featured poet is Harvey Stanbrough, who has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and several other prestigious awards. Harvey recently resumed editorship of The Raintown Review, one of our favorite poetry journals.

We are more than pleased to announce that we now have English translations of full length poems by Nadia Anjuman, the young Afghani poet who died shortly after her first and only book of poems was published.

Oliver Murray was published in THT's February issue.

Priscilla Barton was also published in the February issue.

The Powow River Anthology looks to be a landmark publication, featuring some of the best contemporary poets working in meter and rhyme. Please check it out and order forthwith!

On a personal note, I was honored to have an interview and ten of my poems published by Poetry Life & Times.  I don't often toot my own horn (er, at least not on THT's pages), but this is one I wouldn't mind readers taking a peek at. Also, while I'm at it, I'd like to share a brief piece called "'Fine, even beautiful,' just not for us" about a poetry submission that crashed and burned despite the editor's evident appreciation of the work. Unless I miss my guess, the editor equated my use of meter and rhyme with "less than modern language." I have posted two of the poems submitted to let readers form their own opinions. Please feel free to comment! -- MRB

February 2006: This month, we're very pleased to be able to exclusively feature the poetry and photography of Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy, in addition to being nominated for four Emmy awards, has directed three of the best-selling movies of all time and has won both critical and popular acclaim for his poetry, prose, photography and vocals. We hope you'll visit his photography page, www.leonardnimoyphotography.com, assuming you're 18 or older, as some of his photos are intended for mature audiences.

Oliver Murray is a poet with a deft touch and a sure hand. He submitted ten poems and we couldn't find fault with "nary one of 'em" -- so here they all are!

Priscilla Barton is an up-and-coming poet whose words have an authentic ring. 

We have added "Storms" to the poetry page of T. S. Kerrigan. "Storms" was the closing poem in the current issue of The Raintown Review, which featured poetry by several THT poets. Our congratulations to TRR editor Harvey Stanbrough, who has re-taken the helm of TRR, and we highly recommend a subscription to TRR to our readers. We have updated Harvey's page with a number of poems from his just-released book, Beyond The Masks.

We have also put the finishing touches on the poetry page of Quincy R. Lehr, whose work appeared for the first time in the December 2005 issue.

And for good measure, we have "freshened" the page of Judy Jones, an artist, photographer, poet and storyteller who works among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor." We just learned that Judy is facing a life-threatening illness she contracted while doing volunteer hurricane relief work for the Red Cross, and we ask for your prayers on her behalf -- not only for her health, but that she will be able to publish two very important books that are dear to her heart. One is on the homeless, and the other is about Mother Teresa. 

January 2006: Thanks to Tom Merrill, who took the time to scan and e-mail THT a number of poems by Leslie Mellichamp, a fine poet who is also well known as the long-time editor of The Lyric, we are pleased to feature Leslie Mellichamp's poetry for a second time.

And we're very pleased to be able to feature the poetry and photography of Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy, in addition to being nominated for four Emmy awards, has directed three of the best-selling movies of all time and has won both critical and popular acclaim for his poetry, prose, photography and vocals.

Takashi “Thomas” Tanemori--descendent of a proud Samurai family, Hiroshima survivor, peace activist, poet and artist--is a man who can share not only hard-earned knowledge and wisdom, but also an ebullient spirit.

Thanks to Amy Waldman, a reporter for the New York Times, we have three more lines of poetry by Nadia Anjuman, along with an account that gives us a glimpse of the young woman behind the poems:  Swathed in black, she curled up like a cat in her professor's study, black eyes peering from an elfin face. She is 20 years old and has written 60 or 70 poems. As the first person in her family to love words, she has had to fight, like a number of Professor Rahyab's students, for her family's cooperation. She has fought, too, to stave off marriage, fearing it will limit her freedom to write. ''I think I've been quite successful,'' she said. ''Girls are expected to marry at 14 or 15.'' She writes mostly about women's lives, ''because we have suffered a lot.'' She read an excerpt in a high voice:

I was discarded everywhere, the poetic whisper in my soul died.
Do not search for the meaning of joy in me, all the joy in my heart died.
If you are looking for stars in my eyes, that is a tale that does not exist.

Please click her hyperlinked name above to read the full account.

The HyperTexts is honored and proud to have been able to publish a number of unique pages of poetry, art and essays about the Holocaust, some of which have never been published elsewhere. In some cases we don't even have the names of these poets, only their words. For the first time, we have "brought together" all these pages into one convenient index of Holocaust Poetry.

Esther Cameron has two featured works published on The HyperTexts:

Prophecy
a corona of sonnets
in memory of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)
and Paul Celan (1920-1970)

The World's Last Rose
Sonnets for the Prince of Twilight
a poetic tribute to Paul Celan (1920-1970)

December 2005: Mike Snider is our featured poet this month. In addition to writing poetry, he has what we believe may be the only formal poetry blog at Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium. But forget the blog for a moment and read the man's poetry, because it's authentic with the added umpf that only comes from a man having lived what he's writing about. When you've read his poems, by all means check out his blog.

We're pleased to be able to introduce our readers to the work of Anna Evans. Anna is sure to be a featured poet in an upcoming issue of THT, quite possibly next month, so please be sure to tune your browser to THT from time to time. And please be sure to check out the formal poetry e-zine she edits, The Barefoot Muse. Good things are happening in formal circles, and Anna Evans is one of them!

Simon Harrison is another poet we expect to be featuring in an upcoming issue, but neither we nor you would want to wait to read such fine poems, so don't dilly-dally!

Quincy R. Lehr has only been writing poetry seriously since 2003, but he's making up for lost time. His poetry has been published in Iambs and Trochees and Pivot, and all indications are that he'll go far in formal circles, with ever-widening ripples ...

Nadia Anjuman is a young Afghani poet whose life and words deserve to be remembered and honored. We're on the prowl for translations of her work into English, so please contact Mike Burch at mburch@aocg.cm if you know of any.

November 2005: We continue to showcase October's three featured poets: Anton N. (Tony) Marco, Lee Passarella and T. S. Kerrigan. And we're pleased to be able to publish reviews by Midwest Book Review's Laurel Johnson of Outlaw's Retreat by Tom Merrill and 42 Poems in Rhyme & Meter by Mary Keelan Meisel. You can find both reviews on our Essays & Assays page, alongside a review of Emery Campbell's This Gardener's Impossible Dream by Ethelene Dyer Jones. Folks, these are three fine books by three outstanding poets, and we're not going to be shy about tootin' our own horn that we "done brung them out," though in truth all credit goes to the poets and their publisher, Joe Ruggier of MBooks. You can find examples of the work of T. Merrill, Mary Keelan Meisel and Emery Campbell, all recent THT featured poets, by mouseclicking their hyperlinked names. Could we make it any easier fer ya? These books are all first editions printed in initial quantities of 100 books or fewer. Need we say more? Also, we have four late additions this month, just in time for Thanksgiving: R. Nemo Hill, Keith Holyoak, Ellaraine Lockie and Lee Slonimsky. And last but certainly not least, we have a page of art and photos by Karen J. Harlow that includes her "takes" on THT poets Luis Omar Salinas, Michael McClintock and Luis Berriozabal.

Finally, right before Thanksgiving, we're thankful that Laurel Johnson has been kind enough to grace THT with a review.

October 2005: Anton N. (Tony) Marco is a featured poet for the month of October. Tony has been a frequent contributor to THT's pages, and he's also active in the lively Las Vegas poetry scene. 

We're also pleased to be able to introduce our readers to the poetry of Lee Passarella, whose poetry has appeared in Chelsea, The Formalist, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Slant, and other journals of note.

We also continue to feature the poetry of T. S. Kerrigan, a September featured poet.

September 2005: This month we're fortunate and pleased to be able to feature the poetry of T. S. Kerrigan. Kerrigan has been published in The Formalist, Light, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Southern Review, and other journals of good repute. His work was recently included in Good Poetry, an anthology by Garrison Keillor issued by Viking-Penguin. He is also a past president of the Irish American Bar Association, and once argued a case before the Supreme Court, which he won.

We continue to showcase the poetry of Douglas Worth and Michael McClintock, who were our featured poets in August.

We also have completed our first trifecta, by adding our third Yala Korwin page. In addition to her personal poetry and Holocaust poetry pages, we now have a page of her visual art.

And for good measure, we've added three new poems to Esther Cameron's poetry page. Also, we have added yet another superior poem, "To the Golden Gate Bridge," to Moore Moran's page. And we've added a delectable poem with the unlikely title "Richard Feynman Orders Nigiri-Sushi" to Patrick Kanouse's poetry page. Bon appétit!

Also, we want to make our readers aware that Richard Moore's new book, Sailing to Oblivion, is now available from Light Quarterly Imprints. Moore is one of the best and funniest poets we have, and therefore Sailing to Oblivion is a must-have book. Please click here for more information.

August 2005: This month we're pleased to be able to feature the poetry of Douglas Worth. Worth was recommended to us by THT stalwart Richard Moore, and his work has been acclaimed by Robert Creely, Richard Wilbur, Denise Levertov and A. R. Ammons, among others.

We're equally pleased to be able to introduce our readers to the work of Michael McClintock, whose name and work are well known in haiku, senryu and tanka circles. In the past he has edited the American Haiku Poets Series and Seer Ox: American Senryu Magazine, and he has also served as Assistant Editor of Haiku Highlights and Modern Haiku. He currently writes the "Tanka Cafe" column for the Tanka Society of America Newsletter, and edits The New American Imagist series for Hermitage West. 

We've also added a new poem, "Diving into Morning" to the poetry page of Tony Marco. We hear that Tony is making waves on the Las Vegas poetry scene, and this poem is a good indication of why he's a "splash hit."

While we're trying to find time / to further inundate the world with rhyme, here's "literary/artistic criticism" from an unexpected but helpful and hopeful source:

Fred McFeely Rogers on Boethius, Saint-Exupery and Yo-Yo Ma

July 2005: We're pleased to announce that MBooks and THT have just published books by Emery Campbell and Mary Keelan Meisel, with books by T. Merrill, Zyskandar Jaimot and other THT poets to follow. To order books and CDs by THT poets, and writers of similar caliber, please click this Books Link. We hope our readers will support our continuing efforts to shine a little poetic light "here, there, everywhere."

In the spirit of Independence day, we're pleased to be able to publish a poem by Meidema Sanchez and a drawing by Victoria Lassen, both 8th graders in the class of Marcella Previdi at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School. The story of how they became inspired to fight anti-Semitism with art was originally carried by the Queen's Tribune on June 9, 2005. Our thanks to THT poet Yala Korwin for helping us obtain the rights to publish the poem and drawing.

Also in the spirit of July 4th, we have put together a page (not very originally) called Let Freedom Sing! Poetic songs of freedom are often wild and dark, as our readers will see ...

Also in keeping with our July 4th theme, we've added a page of poetry by, about and admired by Abraham Lincoln. If you'll read this page, you'll find lines penned by Lincoln that are at times reminiscent of Dickinson, Poe, Clare and Herrick. You'll also find what might be the raciest poem of the 1860s, also written by Lincoln. This bit of ribald doggerel was said to have been "more popular than the Bible" in southern Illinois! Lincoln was a true admirer and lover of poetry, and once remarked of a particular poem, "I would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece ..."

THT is pleased to be able to add another fine, refined poem, "Split," to the poetry page of George Held. "Split" was rejected 40 times before finally being accepted. Which proves two things: (1) There is no accounting for taste, especially that of poetry editors. (2) George Held is one perseverant poet, and one to be Held in the highest regard. "Split" will be published in The Art of Bicycling, where it will appear alongside poems by Walt Whitman, Seamus Heaney and Rita Dove.

We think you'll like our newest Mysterious Ways features:

The Stone of Destiny (the Liath Fàil)
Kids on Love: What the Real Experts Have to Say
Albert Einstein on "Things Mysterious"
The Very Mysterious Metaphor of Entanglement

To read any of the articles above, just click either Mysterious Ways hyperlink.

June 2005: This month we're pleased to be able to feature the poetry of George Held. Many of our readers will recognize his work from The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The New Formalist, Commonweal, and other journals of note. George has a wonderful personal touch on poetic portraits like "Elise" and "Honey," and one cannot help but be impressed with his ability to work Joe DiMaggio, Bill Gates, W. B. Yeats and Euterpe into a single poem ("Finding My Way").

Christopher T. George is another poet new to THT's pages whose name may ring a bell from familiar journals. His poetry has been published in Poet Lore, Melic Review and Triplopia, among others.

Judy Jones is an artist, a photographer, a poet, and a storyteller with fascinating and sometimes out-and-out miraculous tales to tell of her work among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor."

THT had been waiting "eagerly with patience" for the right to publish "Monterey County" by Moore Moran, and now our patience has been rewarded. We have also added a brand-spankin'-new poem, "When Paris Lay at Helen's Side," to one of THT's best poetry pages, so please reacquaint yourself with it forthwith. If you've never visited Moore Moran's poetry page, you should heed these sage (ever-so-slightly-paraphrased) words of Mark Twain: "The man who does not read good poems has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."

This month we also debut a new Mysterious Ways feature: "Kids on Love: What the Real Experts Have to Say."

May 2005: This month it is our pleasure to feature the poetry of Robert W. Crawford and David Gwilym Anthony. Poetry like theirs need no introduction, so please peruse forthwith! It does bear mentioning that Robert W. Crawford is yet another Powow River Poet, joining Rhina Espaillat, A. M. (Mike) Juster, Deborah Warren, Len Krisak, Michael Cantor, Michele Leavitt and Midge Goldberg. That's quite a high-wattage assemblage of poets, and we only wish we could dam and bottle the water they drink in "those there parts" and dole it out, Perrier-like, to some of the more arid regions still experiencing the dearth of postmodernism. 

[An interesting sidenote: THT continues to feature the poetry of  Pope John Paul II. In an e-mail to me, Robert Crawford pointed out another of those "harmonic convergences" that seem to happen so often with THT these days: "The odd thing (and very humbling) is that when my poem, 'Olber's Paradox,' was in First Things, that particular issue also featured a review of Pope John Paul II's poetry by Joseph Bottum." -- MRB]

Ashok Niyogi has agreed to be a traveling poetic correspondent of sorts for THT, and during his current travels through India and some of the remoter Himalayan hinterlands, he has been kind enough to offer to e-mail us his thoughts and impressions in the form of poems. The first such poem, "Letter to Ulitsa Myitnaya from a Himalayan Hamlet," now appears at the top of his THT poetry page. Please click the hyperlink above / to read a tale of Himalayan love [as always, please pardon the doggerel].

And now, as the cliché goes, "for something new and completely different" ... a fugue in five poetic parts about the various perils and sagas of leaves, by Charles "Charley" Weatherford. And while our introduction may not be the height of originality, the poems themselves are quite original, and good fun to boot!

We're also pleased to introduce a new poem to our Mysterious Ways page. The poem is "Escaping the Light of Day" by Mary L. Mazzocco. We have also added a new featured article to Mysterious Ways: "Did Jesus Walk on the Water?" by serial contributor Judy Jones. This is actually an anecdote and is only incidentally related to the story of Jesus walking on water, but it's a short story that is well worth reading and contemplating.

We have also added a new poem, "The Unveiling of Belzec Monument," and several watercolors and other works of visual art to Yala Korwin's poetry page.

April 2005: Thanks to Esther Cameron, we are pleased to announce that Ethna Carbery is our April featured poet. Our sincerest thanks to Esther for supplying us with a rainbow's-end trove of big-hearted, heartfelt Irish poetry!

Our second featured poet is Mary Keelan Meisel, and this time our thanks goes to Joe Ruggier for arranging for us to be able to use poems of hers that he had previously published through his journal The Eclectic Muse and his Multicultural Books small press.

Karol Jozef Wojtyla was an unknown Polish actor and poet long before he became known to the world as Pope John Paul II. Please click the link to the left to see poetry by Pope John Paul II, along with a fairly comprehensive literary bio. An elegy by Joe Ruggier appears at the bottom of the page. [Editor's note: As I worked on the Pope's bio, I noticed a number of interesting similarities between his "literary bio" and that of Ronald Reagan. They both were actors; they both wrote poetry; as young men they both read what seemed to have been "prophetic manuscripts" which profoundly influenced their lives, and which they later fulfilled (the Pope's was a poem; Reagan's was a book, That Printer of Udell's); they both played vital roles in the downfall of the Evil Empire in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. How interesting that a Polish Catholic Pope and an Irish Protestant President had so much in common! -- MRB]

In one of those interesting coincidences or providential convergences that seem to happen quite often, I just finished proofreading a story for a good friend (good in the truest sense of the word because she's doing good work with the poorest of the poor), the artist Judy Jones, and her story Thy Will Be Done (Iron Lung) leads off with a quotation by Pope John Paul II. Her story is on our  Mysterious Ways page. 

Because we were a tad tardy posting his poetry page last month, Ashok Niyogi remains a featured poet this month. Niyogi was born in Calcutta, India and spent more than 25 years working in various parts of the world, including the former USSR and Russia. Now retired from commerce (other than the commerce of words), he is a professional poet and writer who divides his time between the US and India.

Michael Bennett is a new poet to these pages, but some of our readers will remember him from Poem Online, where his sharp eye and a sharper tongue were often wielded to aid and/or dismay young poets in search of tutelage. 

We are pleased to offer two reviews of the third revised edition of This Eternal Hubbub by Joe Ruggier. Please click on this link to our Essays & Assays page to read the reviews: one by Laurel Johnson and one by THT Editor Mike Burch.

We're pleased to announce that THT is now getting between 2,000 to 3,000 hits per month on our main page, more than double the hits THT was getting only a few months ago.

March 2005: T. Merrill is our March featured poet. His poems come like a breath of fresh air on an otherwise insufferably sluggish, muggish August night. Considering the climate of contemporary poetry, we think our readers will appreciate such a freshening! 

Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta, India and spent more than 25 years working in various parts of the world, including the former USSR and Russia. Now retired from commerce (other than that of words), he is a professional poet and writer who divides his time between the US and India. THT was scheduled to publish his work next month, but because he's en route to the Himalayas as this feature is added (and because he's promised to send us pictures and poems thereof to share with our readers), we have elected to send him this poetic "bon voyage!" 

We're delighted to be able to add a truly lovely poem that honors the work of a THT artist, Makoto Fujimura. The poem, "Nihongan Altar," is by Marly Youmans and it appears at the top of her poetry page, so please click on her name to peruse it forthwith. 

Just in time for St. Patrick's day, and thanks entirely to Esther Cameron, we have an exotic page to offer, all about a poet you've surely never heard of, but surely should have: Ethna Carbery (our heartfelt thanks to Esther for a small trove of big-hearted, heartfelt Irish poetry!).

We've also added a new poem, "Morning of Departure" to the poetry page of Tony Marco, and it's another "good 'un" that you won't want to miss.

Finally, we're thankful to Esther Cameron for sending us "The Journey to Unity" by Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen, which will adorn and grace our Grace Notes page.

February 2005: June Kysilko Kraeft continues as our February featured poet, along with Len Krisak, who won the Richard Wilbur prize in 2000 for his book Even as We Speak. Also, two poems have been added to the bottom of Norman Kraeft's poetry page: a poem entitled "Crescendo Against Heaven" written by THT's editor, and a touching, gentlemanly poem by Norman Kraeft about understanding that is better read than described.

Simon Perchik has been published in Partisan Review, Poetry, The New Yorker and many other journals, and "is the most widely published unknown poet in America" according to Library Journal. His poetry is full of what one reviewer calls "elemental tokens": tokens that sometimes seem simultaneously familiar and alien in the landscapes of his poems.

February seems a fine month for THT to be able to introduce its readers to the poetry of  Julie Kane. Her poem "Thirteen" is reminiscent of "At Seventeen" by Janis Ian, a song that has haunted many a teenager to, through and beyond maturity. Kane's poems like "Maraschino Cherries," "Egrets," "Kissing the Bartender" and "Dead Armadillo Song" demonstrate her virtuoso range and what we take for staying power.

We're also pleased
amidst a February freeze
to be able to introduce Laura Heidy,
mother of three:
which makes us sure she's 
weathered sufficient stress 
to be a poetess!

Please pardon the doggerel!

Michele Leavitt is another poet new to THT's pages. She joins our "powow" of Powow River Poets that now includes Rhina Espaillat, Deborah Warren, Len Krisak, Mike Juster and Michael Cantor. 

Midge Goldberg is another new poet, for us at least, although her poems have appeared in some of our favorite journals, including Edge City Review, Pivot and The Lyric. She's yet another Powow River Poet. Just what do they lace the waters of Powow River with? Someone should bottle it, pronto!

It's a particular pleasure for THT to be able to publish two poems by Leland Jamieson. Please allow me to digress, if I may, in a very un-editorly way (or so I hope). While it may be true that power is a dangerous thing, especially in untrained hands, there is a inevitably a downside. The downside to having editorial power--surely the most negligible power imaginable, or perhaps not--is that sometimes the editor ends up in the uncomfortable position of really wanting to publish a poet, yet having to toe the line of his ticklish, pricklish personal inhibitions. My personal inhibition as an editor is that sometimes a poem seems good, but still seems wrong, simply because it could, and therefore should, be better. What I really want is for the poet to see the potential of his or her own poem. If I can see the poem's potential for betterment, why can't the poet? Almost invariably such a proposition leads to an impasse. I hold out that the poem can be improved. The poet holds out that it is already quite obviously perfect. If I defend my position too strongly, the poem doesn't get published. Ditto with the poet. In such impasses, only the better poets prevail over the beleaguered editor, whose last line of defense is invariably "You talk a better poem than you write." But sometimes a poet is amenable to critique and something wonderful happens: the poem improves, it gets published, and everyone involved wins: editor, poet and especially readers. I like to think something like this happened with these poems of Leland Jamieson's. I've been pulling for Lee to make the THT "cut" for some time, and now he has. The best thing of all is that the poems are clever, well written, and (to borrow a word from one of Lee's poems), they "electrify." -- MRB

Tara A. Elliott is yet another poet new to THT. She and Gene Justice are co-editors of Triplopia, an eZine that has published work by several THT poets, and she has been a multiple gold medal winner of the Net Poetry & Arts Contest (NPAC), which has been judged by THT poets Tony Marco, Jennifer Reeser, Harvey Stanbrough and Joyce Wilson.

Rhina Espaillat's poem "You Who Sleep Soundly Through Our Bleakest Hour" has been added to her THT poetry page, and also to Mysterious Ways. Also new to her poetry page is "Arbol Vecino," a Spanish translation of Robert Frost's "Tree at My Window," which has been on a banner with the English original, on exhibit all summer in various city parks of Lawrence, MA ...

Esther Cameron's review of THT's Holocaust Poetry now appears on our Essays & Assays page.

January 2005: This month we have a very special featured poet, June Kysilko Kraeft. As many of our "insiders" and "frequent fliers" know by now, June Kraeft passed away July 21st of last year. June was a writer, a poet, a photographer, a cook, a prize-winning horticulturist, and the co-author with her husband Norman Kraeft of several books on American art. Her THT poetry page will not only showcase her own poetry, but will also be a place for family, friends and admirers to say their last words on her behalf. If you knew June Kraeft, or if you read and admired her poetry, please feel free to e-mail your thoughts, poetry or prose, to THT's editor at mburch@aocg.com. 

This tribute page will be a work in progress that will be updated frequently, so please visit it  throughout the month.

Our thanks to Richard Moore for contributing his thoughtful, insightful essay "Pain and Death" to Mysterious Ways, where it is now the featured article. 

The HyperTexts does not solicit funds for ourselves, but we're not above asking our visitors to help raise funds for a worthy cause. Here's a link from which you can select a charitable organization involved in the current Tsunami relief effort: www.justgive.org/tsunami/index.jsp. It pays to be careful. Before my wife and I made a donation to the American Red Cross, I called their 800 number and made sure I knew how to go about making sure our donation would go directly to the Tsunami relief effort, via the International Red Cross. Of course, we don't want to neglect worthy American charities, but if we all give what we normally give to our charities of choice, and if we all "sweeten the pot" by giving something additional to the many fine organizations helping out in South-East Asia, many lives will be saved and much disease, starvation and further tragedy will be avoided. Also, it's my understanding that contributions to the Tsunami relief effort before January 31st will be deductible on our 2004 federal income tax returns. So perhaps we can all compute our taxes early this year, and for every extra dollar we donate, the U.S. government will, in effect, "chip in!" -- MRB

We continue to feature Wladyslaw Szlengel because Yala Korwin has been kind enough to translate several of his poems and allow THT to publish them first. These are important poems by an important poet most readers have never encountered. If you've missed our past issues, you may want to visit related pages that  THT has published recently: Esther Cameron's translations of poems about Janusz Korczak, a page of writings (some recast as poems) by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, poetry by the third Pulitzer Prize nominee we've published, Charles Adés Fishman, a page of Yala Korwin's translations of the poems of Jerzy Ficowski and Jewish ghetto poets, and a special page of Yala Korwin's own Holocaust poetry.

December 2004: We have added a poetry page for Wladyslaw Szlengel that ties in well with similar poetry pages THT has published recently: Esther Cameron's translations of poems about Janusz Korczak, a page of writings (some recast as poems) by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, poetry by the third Pulitzer Prize nominee we've published, Charles Adés Fishman, a page of Yala Korwin's translations of the poems of Jerzy Ficowski and Jewish ghetto poets, and a special page of Yala Korwin's own Holocaust poetry.

This month we're pleased to introduce our readers to the work of Jill Williams, who numbers among her credits a Broadway musical, songwriting, an album published by RCA Victor, celebrity interviews, four nonfiction books, two poetry books, and poems in some of our favorite journals, including Light Quarterly, Edge City Review and The Lyric. She has dared to capture a yawning lion on film, and (even more daringly) has taught creative writing to college students! Oh, and she also does poetry readings across the United States and Canada.

We're also tickled pink 'n' polka dots to be able to publish the light verse of Edmund Conti, an accomplished humorist who has had over 500 poems published, although he claims not to keep count! Somehow we suspect he's not highly enough paid (is any living poet?) to make your lawsuit anything other than frivolous, so we suggest you rest your case and indulge in a little light-hearted frivolity.

It's an honor and a pleasure to introduce our readers to the poetry of Marc Widershien, an accomplished, often-published poet whose influences include Samuel French Morse, John Malcolm Brinnin, Robert Lowell, Daisy Aldan and Ezra Pound.

Len Krisak will be the featured poet in an upcoming issue of THT, but we're pleased to be able to offer our readers a "sneak preview" of his poetry page just in time to kick off the new year with a bang!

Also this month we've updated the poetry page of  Zyskandar Jaimot with a new poem, "Siacon," and some of Zaj's own amazing imitations of the masters. If you haven't seen his page lately, you'd be remiss to miss the changes we've made! 

November 2004: This month we're pleased to be able to review The Consciousness of Earth, a book-length epic poem by this month's Featured Poet, Esther Cameron. The Consciousness of Earth strikes me as an important poem, so much so that I took the time out of a hectic, haphazard schedule to review it myself. Ho