(Cover for first edition of fiction and poetry collection I Made My Boy Out of Poetry) “Dedicated artists, innovators, and stewards of our language, they tell us not only who we are, but also who we can become. They distill our emotions, clarify our thoughts, and renew our spirits with the vigor of their words and the freshness of their perspective.” ––Former President Bill Clinton, from Letter Acknowledging Launch of National Poetry Month, April 1, 1996 Members of the Academy of American Poets had no way of knowing when they established National Poetry Month in 1996 that something called 9/11 would pop up on the radar screen of history just four years later. Although a man-made mass trauma, 9/11 was equal in emotional impact to what came later: the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that took approximately 225 thousand lives, the 2010 earthquake that brought Haiti to its already weary knees with more than 300 thousand deaths, and the comb...

                                              (Associated Press photo of Louis C. Taylor) “The whole world knows I’m innocent.” --Louis C. Taylor In what way does overturning an apparent wrongful conviction after an individual has served some 42 years in prison, without allowing the one so convicted to seek corrective redress, an act of justice? That is a question which many who have been following the case of 59-year-old Louis Cuen Taylor for years, and which others just learning about it, are asking after his recent release from the Arizona State Prison system. Taylor’s freedom came with the condition that he plead “no contest” to charges that he set fire to the historic Pioneer Hotel in Tucson, Arizona, on December 19, 1970. The blaze took the lives of 28 people (the number was first reported as 29 until investigators realized they had counted one victi...

                           (digital art graphic courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Productions) One of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit is the ability to exercise gratitude in the face of grievous adversity. Cultivation of a sense of gratitude under any conditions is advantageous in general because it tames impulses toward delusion-inducing arrogance, soul-numbing indifference, and corruptive malice. During this National Poetry Month 2013 , I have found myself considering all the reasons I am grateful for the presence of poetry in my life and in this world. Among those reasons is the fact that there was a time, in years not so long ago, when I struggled inside a kind of “dark night of the soul”––one that in many ways appeared to reflect an eclipse of the world’s collective soul–– and it was the voices of living poets that called to me from unknown distances and took it upon themselves through th...

                        (graphic courtesy of  Global March for Peace and Unity  on Facebook) “A vision of humanity as a unified force for peace had come alive in the form of millions of living breathing souls and an ideal of international democracy had been realized on a small but unprecedented scale.  History was not only made––history was tremendously honored.” – from The American Poet Who Went Home Again (Aberjhani) During this Easter Holy Week 2013, I find myself thinking about the challenges that Peace faces in our world and wonder why humanity seems to insist more on its destruction than its empowerment. From the recent murder of a 13-month-old baby in Brunswick, Georgia (allegedly by a 15-year-old boy), to the nearly two dozen wars (plus two dozen more conflicts of a similar nature) currently devouring human sanity from sunrise to sunrise, the suicidal lust for the annihilation of life on every...