Poems & Essays
Poetry & Democracy
Essays and poems on democracy, presented as part of the Poetry Coalition's annual theme.
Poetics of a Post-Fact Nation
In America, a thing we like to tell ourselves of late is that we're living in a post-fact world. Between a President with an antagonistic relationship to reality, foreign operatives trolling our social media, and an ever-multiplying crop of suspect news sites, facts seem to keep falling through the cracks.
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Poetry and Democracy
Over the course of the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, many writers have had files created in their name for many reasons, ranging from suspicion of being a Communist and having "anti-US sentiment" (Larry Neal); of being an anti-Vietnam protester (Susan Sontag); for publicly deciding to write a book about the FBI (James Baldwin); and supporting Black writers and entrepreneurship (J. Edgar Hoover's investigation of Black bookstores). Who determines if this small essay is flaggable for investigation, and how could said investigation possibly secure safety if it simultaneously finds suspicious an execution of the first amendment?
Poetry & Democracy
Twice now, a man has acknowledged the general success of my work (success in terms of achievement of my poems, not the achievement of my poems in the world) before stating that he didn't feel that my poems were "written for [him]."
In Defense of Predictability
I read a picture book to my son about a father crossing the border with his own son titled "La Frontera." My son just turned one and is too young to know what a border is, or that frontera means border in Spanish, or that there are two languages I am speaking to him, or that they are words that point to something outside of this small world made up of only us two, as he nestles himself next to me in his skinny pajamas before brushing his teeth and going to bed.
