Richard Jeffrey Newman

From my Scrapbook:

That’s a very cool cover.

Poetry Versus Propaganda: When a Poem Devolves Into Rhetoric The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children. —Audre Lorde, “Power” Back in 2019, I was asked to review a book of poems by Steven Sher called C...

For me, the spiritual practice of writing poetry locates itself in the moment that the language in which I am immersed opens up into possibilities I neither predicted nor consciously desired and the decision I have to make about whether to trust where that language will lead me.

#writing #poetry

Four by Four #48 Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, For Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me

"I live in New York, where abortion is legal and where...it can be all too easy not to pay attention to what abortion bans around the country are doing to women, their families, and their doctors. To say that the right is waging a war on women is not to indulge in metaphor."

Hah! This was at a street fair in Manhattan. Sounded so unappetizing.

No comment.

YouTube video by Sagging Meniscus 2025 Brooklyn Book Festival Booth Reading: Richard Reads Amir Or's WINGS

At the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 21, I had the opportunity to record this video for Sagging Meniscus press. I'm looking forward to reading the book, Wings, by Amir Or, translated from the Hebrew by Seth Michelson:

@saggingmeniscus.bsky.social #writing

#writing

Four by Four #47 Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, For Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me

#writing

Lines That Didn’t Make The Cut #3

You know you are expected to respond,
that rules establish how to choose your words.
Instead, you lead her out beyond the edge
and watch her iron shackles become birds.
Surrender to this failure. Shave your head.
Embrace her like the resurrected dead.

#poetry

What Poems Do We Need Right Now? That’s the question Tricia Knoll’s poetry group responded to just before she read my introductory post from last month. She thought it was a pretty cool segue from her group’s que…

I write a blog for my publisher, Fernwood Press. Called Learning To Love The Questions, it's focus is the relationship(s) between and among poetry, politics, and spirituality (broadly defined). Check out this month's post: What Poems Do We Need Right Now?

#poetry #writing

Lines That Didn’t Make The Cut #4

You did not create

the arrogance

that lies in wait.

Wilted in the sun,

surrendered generosity

is not an accident.

Facts matter.

So does silence.

#writingcommunity

Lines That Didn’t Make The Cut #1

They can’t be less inhuman than they are.

The line of people leaving, a living scar

across the flesh that was our home, stretched far

beyond where I, at six years old, could see.

Even now, that child breathes in me,

riding his father's shoulders...

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 34 A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond.

This week in the poetry blogs w/ @kent-nj.bsky.social @matriches.bsky.social @shawnalemay.bsky.social @robmclennan.bsky.social @mcrucefix.bsky.social @emmalee1.bsky.social @richardjnewman.bsky.social @matthewepaul.bsky.social @salenagodden.bsky.social 1/3
www.vianegativa.us/2025/08/poet...

And there I saw the seed upon the mountain
but it was not a seed it was a star
but it was not a star in was a world
but it was not a world it was a god
but it was not a god it was a laughter

—from “Time in the Rock or Prelude to Definition,” by Conrad Aiken

www.richardjnewman.com/microblog/

You Hate Me

A Dream www.richardjnewman.com/microblog/a-...

Israel Is in Talks to Send Gazans to South Sudan, Officials Say

This is just appalling: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/w...

This made me smile.

Rhythm & Style Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand, here I am sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, with visions, and...

Writing style according to Virginia Woolf

It is always such a pleasure to be included among Dave’s selections.

from "Fixtures and Fittings," by Sarah Salway ...The eternal whispering of the kettle would have kept us awake if our beds had let us sleep, duvets rapunzelling out of windows, but still the oven and the fridge carried on their terrible dance, ...

from "Fixtures and Fittings," by Sarah Salway:

...The eternal whispering of the kettle

would have kept us awake if our beds had let us
sleep, duvets rapunzelling out of windows, but still
the oven and the fridge carried on their terrible dance...

(Untitled) A Cautionary Tale Two Khorasani dervishes were traveling together. One of them, because he fasted for two days at a time, was weak. The other ate three meals a day and was correspondingly strong. The...

A Cautionary Tale:

"A man whose appetite is very small
will not be overwhelmed by any hardship,
but a man who thinks that eating signifies
his wealth—if hardship overtakes him, he’ll die."

—from Golestan by Saadi of Shiraz, translated by Edward Rehatsek and Richard Jeffrey Newman

A sobering fact: My son will be this year the same age I was when I started the job I just retired from.

My Father’s Day gift!

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON This cartoon has four panels (plus a fifth "kicker" panel), all of them showing two women talking on a city street corner. The first woman has reddish-brown hair in a pixie cut, and is wearing a green shirt with blue capris. The second woman has dark hair in a bob cut, and is wearing a blue leather crop jacket over a maroon dress and combat boots. PANEL 1 Capris points accusingly at Jacket. Jacket, annoyed, gives Capris the finger. CAPRIS: You're a male! All you trans women are male! JACKET: You know what? Screw you. PANEL 2 JACKET: Let's be logical. Everyone gets angry sometimes. CAPRIS: Taking refuge in "logic!" Implying that because i'm a woman I'm being irrational! That's so male! PANEL 3 Jacket crosses her arms and looks away, clearly annoyed. Capris is gloating. CAPRIS: Look, now you're sulking! Just like males do! PANEL 4 Jacket has walked away. Capris jumps up and down, yelling at Jacket's back. CAPRIS: Walking away! Males do that! Wearing clothes! Breathing! Male male MALE! KICKER PANEL BELOW BOTTOM OF THE COMIC Jacket makes finger-quotes while Capris, looking very smug, shrugs. JACKET: What about you? Isn't that a "man's haircut"? CAPRIS: When I do it, it's disrupting the patriarchy. CHICKEN FAT WATCH In the background is a store with a window display, slowly revealed as the comic progresses. From right to left: Close-ups of enormous fruit (berries, a banana, a kiwi) sitting or floating over a bed of ice, with water and juice splashing dynamically upwards. A closely-cropped image of a woman’s face, so we just see one eye and the corner of her mouth. One hand is on her cheek. Her lips and nails are icy pink. The transom above the door has an exotic flower decal. On the front door, in an artsy font treatment, it says: "Are we a smoothie shoppe? A NAIL salon? A DISPENSARY? YOU DON'T KNOW!"

MALES do that!

By me and @postcardsbybecky.bsky.social.

Read more cartoons! #PoliCartoon
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#TERFssuck