Today I was honored for 16 years of teaching at Manhattanville University. I've walked with thousands of students into the mysteries of literature, and maybe this photo is an illustration of all those lives blooming, all those lives that will astonish long after I'm gone.

Witnessing

I can still hear Helen Vendler's steady, passionate voice filling the classroom, reciting a line of poetry as though it can save a life, because it can.

Rest, sweet teacher. bostonglobe.com/2024/04/23/met…

🤍🤍🤍

from The Zürau Aphorisms, which Kafka wrote out on fine onionskin sheets when he was ill (translated by Edwin and Willa Muir and Michael Hoffman, Shocken Books, 2015)

Kafka wrote this in his notebook and then crossed it out.

I'm so moved to know this book is helping people. 🕊

Here's where you can get a copy from the bookseller of your choice: smarturl.it/TheMagicWords

Today's Poetry Thread: HEALING

This one is a salvation. Feel free to add poems.

(Today's poem is from Andrea Gibson's YOU BETTER BE LIGHTNING, Button Poetry, 2021)

👇🏼👇🏼❤️

When my students doubt how powerful a comma can be, I write these lines by Ezra Pound on the board:

Today's Poetry Thread: LETTERS

Make the distances sing. Feel free to add epistolary poems.

When new literary spaces ask for my work, I (almost) always say yes, because the passion from these independent hearts is the lifeblood of literature. Thanks, Space On Space Magazine: spaceonspace.com/current-issue/…

Found this note to myself