It’s been over six months since I’ve had a drink. It’s pandemic-related. I didn’t want a depressant to make me sleepy while reading poetry and binge-watching Schitt’s Creek and ACORN shows. To be honest, I hardly noticed. I had a glass of wine maybe three times a week. My husband loved to buy me wine…
Author: Margaret Coombs
Poetry, curiosity, place.
A Poem from Plantain by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Jane Kenyon. The Twenty-first.
First I want to say that the poem is a perfect expression of the literature I discovered with a thrill as a young woman. It speaks in a clear, clean voice. Its theme is passion and disappointed love. This voice still speaks to me, though I am decades past “young.” It’s a poem of the…
I Must Hold These Strangers by Sandra Lynn, Book Review
I puzzle over Sandra Lynn. Her poetry is marvelous. Since 1976, when I first discovered her work, I have been in awe of her skill, her command of imagery and metaphor, her themes. Yet all we have of her body of work today are the poems found in two books: I Must Hold These Strangers, published…
Publications in 2022
It’s 2022! Here are the poems selected by editors for publication in their fine journals. My thanks to them, and for what they do to promote poetry. “A Morning in Mexico.” Mad Swirl. April 23, 2022. “Stars and Possibility.” Soul-Lit. Spring 2022. “Girl on the Cusp,” “At the Center of the World, At the Beginning…
Morning Reading #12
Mary Oliver’s poems deserve a place in worship.