Jehanne Dubrow
To sit on her couch was to be silenced
by upholstery, plush muffling of cushions
from which it was difficult to rise.
Arendt writes, in politics obedience
and support are the same, and for a time
I was obedient, my reports in ordered bullets:
collaborations, programs, opportunities.
The provost preferred speech contained—
a line of staples in a box. I remember
the fold between one week and the next.
She said to me, these people are unreasonable.
She said, these people are quite reasonable.
Inside her office everything was cream.
She told me what I heard I hadn't heard,
our last meeting like a memo full of typos
whited out, then shuffled through
the copier machine, language turned to shiny blurs.
Arendt writes, most people will comply. 
For a time, it was easy to ignore the sharp
wedge of the provost's hair. I should have seen
she resembled more a letter opener on a desk,
how like a knife the piece of metal looks.
I told her what I heard I heard.
I told her that my expertise was words.
Arendt writes, the holes of oblivion do not exist.
A gifted bureaucrat, the provost taught me
truth was thin as paper—the little circles
she punched in it remain, and still
I hold this punctured story to the light.
from the book WILD KINGDOM / Louisiana State University Press
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This poem is from my latest poetry collection, "Wild Kingdom," in which I explore the (frequently) ferocious world of academia. Lines from Hannah Arendt’s "The Origins of Totalitarianism" are threaded into the poem’s narrative, as a way of conveying that the campus—like any other institution—may be corrupted, turned away from the good. Colleges and universities too may become places of cruelty, abuses of power, and authoritarianism.

Jehanne Dubrow on "Portrait of an Administrator with Strategic Plan and Office Supplies
Color headshot of a smiling E. Ethelbert Miller
For the Love of Poetry and Baseball

E. Ethelbert Miller talks about his new book, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery, and Other Baseball Stories. "I wanted to have the book go from childhood through the aging process: When I go to a ballpark, I see older people, older couples who will still keep a scorecard. The love of the game brings some of these older couples out.”

via PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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What Sparks Poetry: Sandra Lim on Roo Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida

"She finely accumulates detail in her descriptions, absorbing the tensions of her own human awareness of nature, and the notions of animal consciousness and even the absence of consciousness. She manages to remain both reverent and witty; in the same poem, she interjects, 'Do you still love poetry?'"
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