It’s National Poetry Month this April. Is it worth celebrating? After all, poetry doesn’t seem to be doing much to alleviate the tension in our communities. Ask some of the middle schoolers I’ve ...

I’ve been writing poetry for about as long as I can remember; in truth, I can’t even remember how long. My mother died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1996; my father died in 2005 from multiple urinary ...