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Poet • Essayist • Educator • Consultant


Take refuge on this path
the page gives you to roam.

Hunker down against
the shadow cast by prayer
and build yourself a line
that won’t efface itself.

Language is not wine.
You cannot pour it freely.

It All Connects

It's The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the September 11th Attacks and It's Erev Rosh Hashanah

It's The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the September 11th Attacks and It's Erev Rosh Hashanah

If you are celebrating, Shana Tovah! I hope we all get the sweet and fulfilling and meaningful and just and peaceful year that we all deserve.
Learning To Love The Questions: Do All Writers Write with a Feminine Soul?

Learning To Love The Questions: Do All Writers Write with a Feminine Soul?

My body, in other words, physically rejects the idea that I write as anyone other than the man I am or that my experience as a man is therefore any less inclusive of everything you mean when you use the phrase “feminine soul.”
In The Town That Taught Me How To Live Like Prey

In The Town That Taught Me How To Live Like Prey

I may not look over my shoulder when I walk down the street the way I did back then, but there are definitely places in both this country and out in the world at large where I wonder how safe I would be as a Jew who insisted on being visible as a Jew.
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Four by Four #58

Four by Four #58

Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, Four Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me
Rereading Alicia Ostriker’s Stealing The Language

Rereading Alicia Ostriker’s Stealing The Language

I could not have articulated it this way back then, but I felt straitjacketed by much of the male poetic tradition in which I was being educated and in which I understood I would be expected to write
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Learning To Love The Questions: To Write Is To Sit In Confrontation With Yourself

Learning To Love The Questions: To Write Is To Sit In Confrontation With Yourself

Wrestling with yourself like that, if you’re honest about it, is to court what can be a very frightening vulnerability, because it means by definition having the audacity to lay claim to a readership’s attention...
Like Domestic Violence, Antisemitism Has Also Been A Thread Running Through My Life

Like Domestic Violence, Antisemitism Has Also Been A Thread Running Through My Life

“We’re building an oven in my basement,” the ringleader smiled. “When it’s finished, remember, we know where you live,”
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Four by Four #57

Four by Four #57

Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, Four Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me
On My Desk Now: I Still Miss The Friend I Wrote This Poem For

On My Desk Now: I Still Miss The Friend I Wrote This Poem For

More than anyone else in my life, and despite the fact that we came from very, very different backgrounds, Adrienne accepted me for who I was.
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Learning To Love The Questions: What Would Literature Be Missing Without You?

Learning To Love The Questions: What Would Literature Be Missing Without You?

[I]f I had never written, if not a single word of mine had ever been published, literature would not be missing a thing.
Towards a Discussion of Male Self-Hatred

Towards a Discussion of Male Self-Hatred

The internal logic of this value system, in other words, is less about protecting my sister than it is about protecting my claim to status within the male hierarchy that is a central part of patriarchy’s infrastructure.
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Four by Four #56

Four by Four #56

Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, Four Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me