Erin Murphy

Today marks 50 years since the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald freighter and its 29 crew members. Here's a poem by Cal Freeman from "The Book of Jobs" that reflects on that tragedy and other deep losses. You can read the entire anthology here: oneartpoetry.com/the-book-of-...

From another of my prose poems in Flash Boulevard. Read all 3 here: flashboulevard.wordpress.com/2025/05/03/e...

Happy to have 3 new prose poems up at Flash Boulevard!
flashboulevard.wordpress.com/2025/05/03/e...

My new book of documentary poems about labor & employment is now available for pre-order. Many thanks to Brian Turner for this generous blurb. To order: a.co/d/2HNxUPP

I'm thrilled that my collection of lyric essays has found a superb home with Harbor Editions!

From the Catholic Standard: Wicked’s” basic message about the need to stand up against prejudice and persecution is obviously congruent with Gospel values. But a scene of marital infidelity as well as the subtle but clear gay sensibility by which the proceedings are occasionally tinged both suggest parental caution. Sharp-eyed viewers will note, for instance, that the uniforms male extras playing college students wear have trousers but also half of what looks like a skirt. And at least one such background figure is in full-blown drag. More substantially, a secondary character in Galinda’s entourage, Pfannee (Bowen Yang), is shown to be as susceptible to Fiyero’s appeal as any of the ladies. During a brief conversation with the prince, in fact, he does everything but fan himself to cool down. The moment passes and we’re back on track. But, along with some bloodless but possibly scary scenes of action, these details point to an appropriate audience of older teens and their elders. The film contains some stylized mayhem, an adulterous incident and momentary same-sex flirting.

From the Catholic Standard review of Wicked. Gay sensibility and same-sex flirting and full-blown drag, Oh, my!

(Also, just wait till they see The Wizard of Oz!)

Very demure, very mindful

See “Anora” (in theatres), not because it won the Palme d’Or but because it’s a brilliant, kinetic, genre-defying film — Pretty Woman meets Dirty Pretty Things meets Goodfellas meets Moonlight. It’s about exploitation & empowerment, seeing & being seen. It’s quite a ride in all meanings of the word.

Whatever else is wrong with the world, at least I didn’t raise my kids in the era of Elf on the Effing Shelf.

So much joy for Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and the University of Akron Press on the National Book Award for Poetry! @lenakt.bsky.social @marybid.bsky.social

“Poem in Which I Realize What I Have Taken for Granted” by Denise Duhamel, (from her Rattle chapbook IN WHICH)

Even my own?

One of my demi-sonnets (originally published in ONE ART)

😂

I just finished the Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It's a phenomenal poem. Not a typo.