Entries by Bethany

WE HAD OUR REASONS, Ricardo Ruiz

Business as usual seems beyond me right now, and I’m daily amazed by the advertisements that make their way into my email-inbox—including from writers merrily chirping about new classes and life changing strategies for writing “your next best-seller!” But here’s me. Dropping some of my 2024 goals, downsizing from the usual blog reviews, but still […]

Victoria Doerper, WHAT IF WE ALL BLOOMED?

WHAT IF WE ALL BLOOMED? POEMS OF NATURE, LOVE, AND AGING, Victoria Doerper. Penchant Press International, Bellingham, WA, 2019, 94 pages, paper, $15.95. What If We All Bloomed? is a perfect title for this book of meditative poems. Here’s a poet who can celebrate marriage in one poem, and claim kinship with frogs in the […]

When Artists Go to Work

I meant to show up today to do a blog-review/appreciation of Ada Limón’s 2011 collection of poems, Sharks in the River. It felt like appropriate reading for this week. (And, indeed, it is.) A woman of color, our national poet laureate. The problem being, I can’t seem to pull a review together. Time is not […]

Election Day

I know I have been strangely silent about the U. S. election — in this venue at least. My family of origin used to be decent, working-class Republicans. Something I didn’t even know until I discovered how much my father admired Ronald Reagan. Now they are die-hard MAGA Republicans. It hurts my heart. If I […]