Sweet old hound in the very last of the summer light. Working very hard to attend to beauty, not in denial of the horror of this moment, but as a reminder to stay resolute in fighting for everything good in the world.

Are we just an RFK hate site now? www.disability-rights-watch.com/2025/09/07/w...

Loved writing this little piece about how to conceptualize the value of a creative writing degree for @pw.org :

YES! We’re all so lucky we’re about to get this brilliant, urgent, expansive book from @zibrak.bsky.social :

The devastating flu epidemic of 1918 was particularly dangerous for young adults, for people in their prime, who died by the millions. But RFK Jr. is too stupid to know that. Link below.

Honestly I’ve spent a lot of my adult life watching Stephen in all his brilliant iterations. My heart breaks. But @stephencolbert.bsky.social go back to @thedailyshow.com!!

“When an ethnic group has nowhere to go and is constantly displaced from one so-called safe zone to another, relentlessly bombed and starved, ethnic cleansing can morph into genocide.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

The summer issue of Image Journal is live today & full of so many gems, including a last poem from the late, extraordinary @marthasilano.bsky.social. My editorial essay, on taxonomies of grief is shot through with gratitude for the solace this work provides. I'm honored to share it all:

"We need the storm, the whirlwind, & the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; & its crimes against God & man must be proclaimed & denounced."

This incredible, generous, accessible resource from @zibrak.bsky.social is officially live today! A primer on exactly the kind of artistic and cultural history those in power are most intent on silencing and erasing right now, this series is smart, approachable, and full of wonder. Check it out!

You guys should support our statewide LGBTQ advocacy org and get this sick ass hat www.wyomingequality.org/store/p/new-...

“Anyone who writes is a seeker. You look at a blank page and you’re seeking. The role is assigned to us and never removed. I think this is an unbelievable blessing. I mean, to be seventy-eight years old and still looking—this amazes me.” —Louise Glück buff.ly/lgqE3GU

“I am part of a support group made up of people who’ve gone through periods of wanting to die and who, like me, are constantly working through how to actively engage with a world that can feel relentlessly untenable.” Hanif Abdurraqib on the uses of despair. nyer.cm/RWqO9fW

I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.—W. S. Merwin

Whatever else is true, this place was wildly beautiful. Always at home back south.

Hi, @motherjones.com disabled disability reporter here, I really want to hear about how tariffs are impacting disabled, chronically ill, and aging folks. Reposts appreciated and my email is [email protected].

"A trick of climate change, or the trick of the effects of climate change, is that some of the biggest devastation is unseen by most of us." @laurenmarkham.bsky.social in conversation with @jennitaur.bsky.social for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/buil...

Amid mounting attacks on higher education, @meghanor.bsky.social argues for a magazine—and a university—that keep the pilot flame of independent thought alive. New today on TYR. yalereview.org/article/megh...

Happy Birthday, LG. Still learning from you; still watching the world the way you taught me

Bright spot for the day!

I prob post this every year around this time, but it remains the case the best Easter poem ever written is this James Tate fire:

"Pope Francis skipped the Vatican’s official meeting with Vice President JD Vance Saturday, instead having his No. 2 give the vice president a lecture on compassion, according to a Vatican statement."

I'm sure someone has already said this more eloquently, but autistic folks who don't pay taxes are still valuable human beings, and people with criminal records should still not be disappeared to foreign extra judicial prison sites. Inherent human worth is the hill.

good grief… "The hospital, originally called the Hospital for the Negro Insane, opened in 1911... a time when lawmakers and health care officials claimed to see a rise in mental illness among Black Americans, which they blamed on their freedom from slavery.” www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/b...

Tonight Dr. Diana Greene Foster, author of the Turnaway Study, spoke to a rapt group of advocates, activists, and providers who had traveled from across the state to listen to her words on the eve of our Supreme Court decision. We’re here for each other and we’re ready. www.cnn.com/2025/04/13/u...

"We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights." FINALLY. Thank you, @harvard.edu, for FINALLY taking a stand.

Eugenicists are so stupid.

This. We have lost 80% of funding for our state Humanities org, which provides programming for rural low pop communities that is so crucial to survival in the most desolate state with the highest suicide rate.

Could not be more excited!

“That poem you love, / That saved your life, / Wasn’t it given to you?” — Gregory Orr . . . This poem appeared in Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2005. Shared here with deep gratitude.

Sweetest surprise this morning is that the first class of grad students I ever taught sent tenure celebration flowers from across the county! Being a teacher is one of the biggest sources of grace in my life, no matter the state of the world, and these writers are magic. ❤️

🔥🔥🔥

Loved getting to talk about shared history, critical fabulation, the political stakes of art, and the way the past echoes into the present at @mcachicago.bsky.social yesterday! *Really* loved getting to see this woman, and remember just how much I adore Chicago! Somehow, back to Laramie by sundown.

Oh HELL YEAH

Chicago! I couldn’t be more excited to read and be in conversation with the artist Mat Bodett this afternoon! The political stakes of art and poetry have never felt more vital, and it’s a privilege to be part of this remarkable series. If you’re here, grab a ticket and come join us!

Tenure! It's a colossal privilege to have arrived in this place, one made possible almost entirely by the enormous amount of support I've been given. Thank you so much to every person, community, and organization that has held me up and resourced my work. Screw you to every person who would...(1/2)

Bleak doesn't begin to describe it as this is like, happening now. www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

The highlight of AWP was— as it always and forever is— the people I love. As with every year, I remembered to take basically no photos (!) but I have never been so grateful to be seen, held, and steadied, never needed more to have so many complicated, ranging conversations or to laugh so hard:

Omg, can this be real or have I gone to heaven? After 50 years of being a published poet, my poems are up at poets.org! poets.org/poet/martha-...

A dream come true to have a poem in APR. I hope this reaches those who need not to be alone in this. 💛

Masks are an accessibility aide for students with disabilities or immunodeficiencies. If you banned wheelchairs, you’d be effectively banning wheelchair users. If you ban masks, you are essentially banning students who are high-risk for covid.

There just really isn’t language for how much I’m going to miss this place, or how much it made me who I am. Forever, Virginia.

If your teachers suggest that your poems are sentimental, that is only half of it. Your poems probably need to be even more sentimental. Don’t be less of a flower, but could you be more of a stone at the same time? —Mary Ruefle, from "On Sentimentality"

A🧵: When I think about the kind of educator I want to be, I always think first of my father: animated; generous; devoted; perpetually awake to the delight, grace, and revelation of language— thrilled every day to offer that to his students, and utterly delighted when it reaches them, (1/2).

Mostly, I think of myself as a person who lives alone, but the way this goof pokes his head around the door of the bathroom as if to say: “what’s going on in here!?” reminds me that, really, that’s not at all the case.

This message from Franny Choi belongs here, too. It has never been more crucial to be unequivocal on this point:

This book is extraordinary, and it will be as phenomenal to listen to as it is to read! Pre-order it now:

This wild, improbable little book is 8 years old! I’m grateful beyond language for the extraordinary ways it altered my life and for everything it’s taught me about both the power and the immutable limits of the informed imagination. I’m sick at the fact that its echos have never been louder. 🧵(1/5)