My Pilgrimage

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I am away from home—away from vacuum cleaners and dirty dishes and laundry and cats-needing-fed and all things routine. Let’s not call it a “trip” (even if it is trippy), but a pilgrimage: to Amherst, Massachusetts, to hang out with Emily Dickinson. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years and years, and never quite managed, until now.

On the first leg of my journey, my dissertation advisor and Dickinson scholar, Dr. Vivian Pollak, met me in Amherst. Vivian and I spent three days exploring together—visiting not only the Emily Dickinson Museum, but also Smith College (where Vivian attended about a year behind Sylvia Plath) and Chester (where a friend of the Dickinson family and correspondent of Dickinson, Joseph Lyman, was born). I also enjoyed sampling local restaurants with Vivian and her husband.

Emily’s iconic white dress and writing desk (in corner)

Emily Dickinson’s gravestone in West Cemetery, Amherst. All photos by B. Reid.

The Mount, Lenox, MA

On day four, when the Pollaks decamped for Boston, I headed west, to Pittsfield and Lenox. My aim was to tour the Berkshire home of Edith Wharton, The Mount (heady stuff). Although Herman Melville’s Arrowhead was closed, I also visited that property, walking around the house and grounds and trails, catching a view of Mt. Greylock, which is said to have played a role in the creation of Moby Dick (written at Arrowhead in “the bitter winter of 1850-1851.”)

Now I am back in Amherst, staying at a historic bed and breakfast and immersed in what I am defining as the writing-retreat phase of my pilgrimage. Thanks to Vivian, I had an hour alone in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, scribbling (with a pencil—no ink allowed!) madly. On the 11th, I have a two-hour group session in the same locale.

Today I am at Mt. Holyoke College, visiting their special collections. On Monday, I have an appointment to visit Amherst College’s Dickinson holdings.

I carted along a number of books, and thought I would catch up with blog-reviews on this trip, but some sort of magic seems to be underway and I find myself hard at work (or at play) with my own manuscript, making discoveries, figuring out what my new book of poems is about.

Thank you, spirit of Emily Dickinson.

I’ve done some exploring around Amherst, too, discovering that a number of writers have called Amherst home (including Robert Frost, who taught at Amherst College). I’ve also visited the Eric Carle Children’s Picture Book Museum (oh my!). And, on one of my long rambles, discovered a mill pond and a water fall, completely unexpected and magical. Like the whole trip.

I think this blog post has come out all a jumble, with the photos not staying where I placed them. But I’m exhausted! Thank you, for listening. Enjoy the photos!

You can explore Emily Dickinson’s home virtually at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/

To learn about Edith Wharton’s The Mount, hop over to this link: https://edithwharton.org/.

Herman Melville’s Arrowhead is included here: https://berkshirehistory.org/.

flock of birds

Terri Cohlene’s A CONSPIRACY OF BLACKBIRDS

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A CONSPIRACY OF BLACKBIRDS, Terri Cohlene, MoonPath Press 2026.

I want to describe Terri Cohlene’s long overdue debut poetry collection, A Conspiracy of Blackbirds, as a hodge-podge, but only if you understand hodge-podge as that strange little store crammed with ancient washing machines, pitchforks, maybe a statue of Cupid or a wrought iron hen with her clutch of chicks, maybe a bag full of unexpected gems. In this collection of poems, you never know what you’ll find, and you’re sure to find exactly what you need.

Cohlene’s subjects include old photographs, old work boots, mothers, daughters, MS, bronzed baby shoes from decades back, lost checkbooks…I could go on. As Patrick Dixon describes it: A Conspiracy of Blackbirds is “a book of surprises.” Somehow—how does she do it?—it all comes together, even the hard stuff transforming into occasions for delight. In “Finally, I Become What You Always Wanted,” addressed to the poet’s mother, we find these instructions: “Cut me open, / count the rings.” One expects such a poem to end with scars, instead—apple blossoms.

Remind me to make a copy of “On the Table” for my massage therapist. It’s a list of all the places old hurts have secreted themselves (an ex-husband, a third-grade teacher, a bully…), and ends:

Then there’s my estranged
mother, lodged like a lizard
around my sternum—
a reminder of why bones
are needed to protect the heart.

On the back cover, poet Sandra Yannone offers the perfect precis: “A Conspiracy of Blackbirds chronicles how one woman breaks free from a multi-generational cycle of abandonments to reach for the sky in a transformative murmuration of stunning flight.” Exactly so. Cohlene—an artist, children’s book writer, playwright, and more—offers a a map to the healing and sustaining power of art. These are poems that do not merely show their maker to be surviving, but with her sense of playfulness and capacity for wonder fully alive.

Tailor

If I put my mind to it,
all my poems could fit into a thimble.

They are, after all, merely the alphabet,
randomly stitched together
in repeating patterns.

And if I choose a font
small enough, say .05,
they would probably
slip through the eye
of a needle

with the dangle of trim,
casual embellishment
of button, bead, fringe

waiting there to be discovered
by the occasional
unsuspecting elf.

—Terri Cohlene

Visit Terri Cohlene’s website to learn (much) more, and to purchase her book. You can also find her book at MoonPath Press, and on bookshop.org. 

photo by Bethany Reid

Where you’ll find me…

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I’m overdue for a catch-up post.

Last year, as you know, was a tough one for me. (I saw my husband twice so far this week, and he is thriving, acting as though living away from home is his new normal, happy to see me, sending me away with a list of things to procure for him. And a bagful of guilt, but you know…)

Despite last year’s drama, I assure you that I am still writing. Lots of what I write stays in my notebooks, or, at best, in rough-draft manuscripts. Yes, I did manage to review several books of poetry in 2025—but only because I was asked to (which always works with me, if you’re wondering)—and I published a few poems, because I was invited to submit to three different anthologies. I did not send out any other work. Not a glorious year, submissions-wise (not after my push in previous years to send out 100+ submissions).

One of my goals this year has been to send out my work. (Why does “submit my work to the editorial process” sound like a dodgy thing to do? “Send out” sounds more assertive.)

So I belong to a small send-out group, and when our attempt to meet once a month and report our progress seemed a complete disaster, we decided to meet once a week and for one hour hang out on Zoom together and instead of talking or moaning or whatever, to work on our send-out.

This did the trick. I’ve now managed 21 submissions of poems, reviews, stories, and essays. Not a lot, but it’s something. And I’ve had a few things accepted.

First, the on-line journal Eclectica took my poem, “Windfall Apples,” which you can find here (and which I should have mentioned some months ago).

More recently, Bracken took my poem, “Her Honeyed Mask.” Their new issue is fresh off the presses and available here. (And it’s gorgeous.)

I’ve reported previously on a couple published reviews in 2026, but my most recent review is a new one, of Anna Odessa Linzer’s new memoir, Writing Home, published by Empty Bowl Press. You can find it at https://www.ravenchronicles.org.

I’m over-the-top grateful for the editors of these publications. Given our current political culture, we cannot take their existence—or the continued existence of any of the arts—for granted. Besides which, editing a poetry journal has always been a labor of love. It’s a privilege to appear on their pages.

I’ll be back with a blog-review in the next few days. Thank you for reading!

Juneteenth

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I am at the Stafford Challenge Conference at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and having a wonderful time. Naomi Shihab Nye is here, and she is one of my favorite all-time poets, so that’s a joy. I’m also enjoying getting to know Kim Stafford and looking forward to his workshop this morning.

If you’ve no idea what the Stafford Challenge is, please visit the website — lots of information about William Stafford, about the challenge to write a poem a day for a year, and about the founder of this terrific challenge, Brian Rohr.

 

Another poet here, brand new to me, is Emmett Wheatfall. (New to me, she said, out of the well of her incredible ignorance. This guy has done and is doing SO much!)

If there is one thing I would do differently at this wonderful conference (if I were in charge of this conference, and other worries), I would begin the welcome on June 19 with “I, Too, Am America,” by Langston Hughes. And I would ask Emmett Wheatfall to read one or two of his poems.

Luckily, Wheatfall was part of the program at last night’s reading. He is a big poet with a big voice and I would love to have more people, at this moment in history, hear that voice.

In My Country ‘Tis of Thee

In My Country,
‘Tis of Thee
I’m still not free.
Far be it from me
is my Sweet land of liberty.
I’ve lost the will to sing
Of thee I sing.
Yes, Land where my fathers died,
and I’m still not free.
I’m a descendent of slaves,
so I know nothing of
the pilgrims’ pride.
Black bodies
if stacked
rise From ev’ry mountainside.
I for damn sure am not free.
Let freedom ring
from the cracked Liberty Bell
in Philadelphia.
I live in the broken state
being the United States
where here
I’m still not free.

—Emmett Wheatfall, from Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence (Fernwood Press, 2025)

Contradictions has as its epigraph a line from Jean-Paul Sartre, “Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” The book is dedicated “To all the poets who dare speak their mind….” One of his poems is a couplet, “If the 45th President Is Reelected”: “we will not have knocked the meteor out of the night sky / we will have punched a hole in that Founding piece of paper.”

“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” — Emmett Wheatfall

Wheatfall ended his reading last night by declaring (throwing out his arms like a Pentecostal preacher) “I love America!,” and then reciting “America the Beautiful.” Have you really looked at those words lately? How are we honoring them? How can we honor them better?

I want to add that, when I was able to talk with Emmett later in the day, he told me he was glad he wasn’t asked to be the voice for Juneteenth — three black people here, and, you know, he said. I also attended his workshop on performance and had my eyes opened — not only to all the performing he has done — but the possibilities for his workshop students to step up their own performance. You can learn more about Emmett Wheatfall at the Oregon Library Association website, or his personal website. Be sure to explore some of the links he offers.

And let me throw in some additional information about Juneteenth and this moment in our country’s history. I hope you read Robert Reich’s “The Truth about Juneteenth” and our current political situation (catch it here). Or see Heather Cox Richardson’s Juneteenth Substack.

William Stafford might advise us:

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot — air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That’s the world, and we all live there.

—William Stafford (1914-1993)

(Poem used in Christopher Luna’s workshop on writing a political poem.)

These are messages that we can amplify.

On my walk this morning I saw a sign at a house across from the Lewis & Clark campus: Whoever you are and wherever you are from, I am glad you here.

So am I.

Bethany