Both of my children were born too soon. My son was twelve weeks premature, and my daughter arrived ten weeks early. Twice, I tried to will my body not to go into labor. Twice, I delivered a baby unable to breathe. Twice, I sat beside an impossibly tiny body hooked up to machines. The early… Read more →
Tag: poetry
The Lone Woman of Kokura
She was alone. The men and women of the domain were all gone. In their flight, they’d set the castle town afire to deny the enemy the prize they sought. There was no stopping the enemy now — there were more of them, and they were better trained, better equipped, and better armed. The only… Read more →
Poetry in America: An Interview with Leah Reis-Dennis
Longtime Nursing Clio readers will remember Leah Reis-Dennis, who wrote the “Versing Clio” series for our blog, with each essay featuring a poem from the American canon that integrates gender, history, and medicine. Now Leah is producing Poetry in America, an exciting new series that is airing on public television around the United States…. Read more →
Pink Hollyhocks
This month, National Poetry Month, we encounter a poem both contemporary and historical — “Pink Hollyhocks,” a piece from Diane Gilliam Fisher’s 2004 collection Kettle Bottom that imagines the voices of dozens of residents of Mingo County, a small Appalachian coal mining community, during the West Virginia labor battles of 1920-1921. Fisher brings a poet’s… Read more →
Women, Animals, and the Poetry of Activism
“What could be more calculated to produce brutal wife-beaters than long savage cruelty toward the other animals?”1 When Edith Ward posed this question in an 1892 issue of Shafts, a British feminist and vegetarian newspaper, she was calling attention to the similar ways that women and animals had been dismissed from moral consideration by men,… Read more →
The Language of the Brag
Unless we’re toiling away in an English PhD program, most of us don’t pause in our daily lives to read poetry — to read anything closely, really. We might scrutinize a job offer or rental contract, or devour a Facebook feed. Seldom, however, do we allow ourselves to pause over a verse, to wade into… Read more →
The Abdominal Exam
Unless we’re toiling away in an English PhD program, most of us don’t pause in our daily lives to read poetry — to read anything closely, really. We might scrutinize a job offer or rental contract, or devour a Facebook feed. Seldom, however, do we allow ourselves to pause over a verse, to wade into… Read more →
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark
Unless we’re toiling away in an English PhD program, most of us don’t pause in our daily lives to read poetry — to read anything closely, really. We might scrutinize a job offer or rental contract, or devour a Facebook feed. Seldom, however, do we allow ourselves to pause over a verse, to wade into… Read more →
Anne Bradstreet’s Elegies for her Grandchildren
Unless we’re toiling away in an English PhD program, most of us don’t pause in our daily lives to read poetry– to read anything closely, really. We might scrutinize a job offer or rental contract, or devour a Facebook feed. Seldom, however, do we allow ourselves to pause over a verse, to wade into a… Read more →
The Sleepers
Unless we’re toiling away in an English PhD program, most of us don’t pause in our daily lives to read poetry — to read anything closely, really. We might scrutinize a job offer or rental contract, or devour a Facebook feed. Seldom, however, do we allow ourselves to pause over a verse, to wade into… Read more →