Walter Bargen, Missouri’s first Poet Laureate, is the author of five books of poetry. I met Walter when we served on the Literature Panel of the Missouri Arts Council. This exchange happened over the internet from 20 – 22 October 2011. jst after making love by a small and nameless stream she misses Pine Street …
I guarantee that this week, the week of Veteran’s Day, someone someplace will say, “We celebrate the sacrifice made by the hero in uniform.” This is an essay about language, especially the words celebrate, sacrifice and hero. Ironically, the very terms Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day are confused. Veteran’s Day is for all those who …
Why zombies? Why now? Zombies are everywhere. Wikipedia lists fourteen comic books, eight nonfiction books, over thirty novels and anthologies devoted to zombies. I won’t even count the movies and TV shows. My favorite is AMC’s “The Walking Dead”, which begins in post-zombie-apocalypse Atlanta. Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, awakens from a …
Between me and my God There are only eleven commandments; The eleventh says: Thou shalt not Bury thy brother alive — Atukwei Okai Like many Americans, perhaps most Americans, I watch with keen interest the Occupy Wall Street movement and its affiliates, in my case Occupy St. Louis. Like many Americans, perhaps most Americans, I …
I went to the Occupy St. Louis rally on Friday. There was a lot of excitement in the air. What struck me was the range of folks — housewives, veterans, unionists, an AARP group, students, teachers of course. Not just the usual “Same Six Radicals”, as a friend puts it. I had a number of …
I occurs to me that I got home from Vietnam forty years ago today. Indeed, at this very hour. My major sensation is not so much nostalgia or sadness as much as — forty years! Forty years. My God, I was only twenty at the time I got out of the army, and now it’s …
still it’s strange – autumn longing for a crisp winter Sunday after church On my desk is a picture of two Japanese screens I saw last year at the art museum. On these screens are paintings of poems hung first from a cherry tree in spring, then from a maple tree in autumn. The petals, …
We all watch for fire for all the fallen dead to return and teach us a language so terrible it could resurrect us all. — Joy Harjo, In Mad Love And War _____ So a colleague says, “You’re a veteran. What are your favorite war movies?” I am alternately drawn to, and disturbed by, war …