Recent Poetry, October 2025

To the Priests of the Orthodox Church

To all guys I with whom I read,

(At least the ones who are not dead).

Who studied theology, from their perch,

Of th’Eastern Orthodox Church.

My Boss

A good publisher knows how to use people, and, I suppose that my former boss’s original Buddhist teacher saw that quality in him. Knowledge that it was a business, after all. No romantic ideas. No notion of editors who sit around reading all the time, making publishing decisions based solely on a work’s value. 

Evangelicalism

The modern evangelical movement arose from the Second American Great Awakening (late eighteenth and early nineteenth century), which was characterized by big emotional camp meetings and revivals. 

Peggy O’Neal (1957-2025)

This what I wrote for my sister’s memorial. Eric read it aloud, as I am still somewhat hard to understand:

Recent Poetry, September 2025

Enlightenment

If we could see things as they be,

God and Satan, beans, that tree,

Are all just me and In my ken.

There is no separateness then.

Hateful actions make no sense,

When no one’s there to take offense.

A Revolutionary Religion

Christianity arose in a period when there were a lot of religions around, and its early liturgies were, of course, influenced by them. But it is harder to understand just how revolutionary Christianity was in that context.

Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953)

Much has been written about this great English contralto, so it’s probably OK that this appreciative American write something about her, but here, where she is not as well known, more than seventy years after her death.