Feeling Is First

I'm late to the party, but I just discovered Guante . His poem  "Ten Responses to the Phrase Man Up"  has been viewed over half a million times and will be published in the Button Poetry anthology  "Viral" . I heard that poem first, and it got me hooked, but his poem "Action" truly moved me. "Rape Culture is silence." I don't think I've ever heard a more perfect definition of Rape Culture the one he gives in this poem. It is silence. It's us not having the conversations we should be having with our friends and our siblings and our kids. We should be telling our girlfriends to stop slut-shaming and our guy friends to stop using violent terms for sex. We should be telling our kids about  enthusiastic consent . ("Consent is not the absence of a no. It's the presence of a yes.") Rape Culture is perpetuated by our silence, by our fear of the potential social isolation that comes from standing up for what's right...

Literary critic Juan Vidal wrote a  piece  for NPR Books entitled Where Have All The Poets Gone? In it he   says, " The Beat Generation is dead, and literary provocation in America, I submit, is at a low." He hungers for a time when poets were at the forefront of marches and rallies, speaking out against injustice.  I don't know what the world used to be like. I don't know if poetry used to have a broader audience than it does now.  Allen Ginsberg died when I was six years old. I've never marched for any cause. But maybe that's because when people in my generation support a cause or are enraged by an injustice, we don't take to the streets. We go to social media. We raise awareness by sharing youtube videos. We try to change minds by blogging.  All the great poets aren't dead and gone. They're online. After Michael Brown's death,  Sarah Kay  shared the poem  not an elegy for Mike Brown  by  Danez Smith  on facebook. Poets a...

I just discovered the poet  Jason McCall . I was looking at literary magazines, and I stumbled upon his poem  Roll Call for Michael Brown  in the magazine  Rattle . The poem sets up the theoretical scenario of one of Michael Brown's college professors accidentally calling his name while taking attendance. I instantly fell in love with the idea behind this poem. It's entirely plausible. We are all so busy, so focused on our own concerns, we can forget Michael Brown's death, even though it only occurred a short time ago. Of course, the poem is also incredibly well-written. I think my favorite line from the poem is, "Someone will / read his name like the next item on a list / of groceries". Mm! It hurts! So I decided to read some more poetry by Jason McCall, and I found  We Love Throwback Thursday  in  The Rappahannock Review . The title suggested whimsy, but I was fooled. This poem knocked me on my ass before the first comma. He says we like to pretend...

I recently quit my job. It's time to stay home and wait for the twins to arrive. I'm sad about it. I liked working. I was teaching math to kids at a learning center, and it felt good. It felt impactful. Quitting was the right thing to do, though. These are the sacrifices we make for our families. Being unemployed got me thinking about what else was out there. What might my next job be? Eventually the twins will be old enough for me to go back to work. Should I keep teaching? Should I try something new? Should I go back to school? So I started looking around online at various opportunities that peaked my interest. Maybe I'd like to work in a group home or a school for children with autism spectrum disorders. Maybe I'd like to get a certificate in bereavement counseling and work with women who've had miscarriages. I stayed up way too late reading about all these things. The whole time I felt a gnawing dissatisfaction in my gut. All the jobs that interest me are ...