for you, friends 🤍

🖤🖤🖤

Sunday! Email for more info: [email protected].

for all the healers

When Joseph Fasano wrote "love is for the ones who love the work" and I cried and I cried and I cried... so true bestie...

I'm not sure why I don't tell many people that I have an album of original songs. Here it is: open.spotify.com/album/0acSvE...

I've found the best way to work through dark times is to gather together as a community and help each other create. On November 9, at 1 PM Eastern, I'll be hosting a webinar/workshop to do exactly that. To get the link, just email me at [email protected]. 🕯️

This is for everyone who needs it. 🖤

It was wonderful to teach a poetry workshop at Harvard this weekend. Thanks to the Harvard Undergraduate Creative Writing Collective for inviting me. When I hear all these new voices, I know the future of literature is bright.

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For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

In a world in which the inhuman *seems* to be winning, a world of genAI emptiness, scores of people came to the Boston Book Festival today to write poems, share voices, and think about how to tell and hear human stories. The soul is alive and well. Let's keep making spaces for it.

I'm giving a *free* poetry workshop today (October 25) at the Boston Book Festival. All are welcome, no matter your level of experience in the world of words. Come and create.🕯️

Whenever I stop by a city to give a reading, I duck into the local bookstores & leave little notes in some of my books for poetry readers. Here we are in Cambridge. 🕯️

For all who didn't make it through the darkness, and for all who are still in it somewhere. 🖤

This poem appeared in the poem-a-day program from The Academy of American Poets and was later collected in The Crossing (2018). I hope it finds its way to you.

These words were too late for a dear friend who left too soon, but I offer them in the hope that they're not too late for someone. Break the stigma. Talk about the pain. Stay.

I'll be giving two events in Boston/Cambridge this weekend, one for the public and one for Harvard undergrads. Details for the public event can be found at the Boston Book Festival website (link below). Come say hi!

I'm giving away a signed copy of The Swallows of Lunetto, my novel about fascism in Italy, because I think we need to understand how the madness can happen anywhere. Just leave a like/comment so I see you, and I'll drop your name in the hat. I hope this book holds its little 🕯️.

Autumn Hymn

🖤

Just to be absolutely clear...

What's a quote or piece of wisdom that sustains you? Maybe we can make a little collection here that people can read through to find what they need.

My 10-year-old niece wrote this with the help of my book of poetry prompts, and I love it so much.

Join me in a poetry workshop at the Boston Book Festival on Saturday, October 25. Details at the link below!

I'm writing my memoir, and a friend just sent me this pic from when I was 20.

fathers 🖤

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The ancient Greeks had a word for this kind of love: φιλία.

Toward the end of her life, Linda Pastan sent me this. ❤️

*perfect* (found in a 1966 issue of The Virginia Methodist Advocate)

my forthcoming book about a father, a child, and what to do when we think the world is ending

This is the single best thing anyone could ever send to a writer. I'm holding back tears.

🖤

All are welcome to join this communal discussion led by poet and professor Joseph Fasano on November 9. To register, email [email protected].

I hope this reaches you.

There should be a "not interested because this is AI" button so the algorithm can learn how much humans don't want that stuff.

My Grandma Fasano has left this world. If you're Italian, you know that means there will never be that particular kind of love, that Sunday feast again.

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Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9:

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This poem.

for anyone in the darkness

please read this

An educational system that does not sufficiently teach history will create students who do not sufficiently know how to recognize tyranny as it arrives.

My poem "October," which was published in @bostonreview.bsky.social and on @poetsorg.bsky.social, and which will be in my upcoming New and Selected Poems from BOA Editions:

for anyone in the darkness

I have a new poem in Cluny Journal: www.clunyjournal.com/p/liszt-in-a...

As long as there are human hearts, there will be Shakespeare: