In a time of discord and division, what lies ahead? That’s the question behind America’s Future, an anthology of poetry and prose from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House that speaks to joy and resilience amidst today’s political turmoil, according to a review in Poets & Writers.
The volume opens with remarks by U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin from an April rally on the National Mall. A collaboration between E. Ethelbert Miller and Miho Kinnas is the first poem in the book:
To Write Is to Flower
We use the dictionary to cut the stems of our poems. Inside the vase they blossom paying attention to prepositions. At night petals fall like adjectives. A stanza begins to reminisce about the past. Elders spoke of a time when people cut flowers with their tongues It is a time to remember the milky liquid that leaked from the stalks. The future sticks to our fingers calling us to write and to flower.
A total of 164 writers contributed to America’s Future, offering a breadth of responses from joy to sorrow, from despair to rage. A sobering but inspiring read.
No matter what you think about the future, the nation’s capital is a good place for poetry. Not only is the Washington Writers’ Publishing House the longest continuously operating nonprofit literary small press in the U.S., but the Federal Poets is the oldest continuously active poetry group in the Washington D.C. area. The Federal Poet is published twice a year, and I was lucky enough to be included in the Summer 2025 edition (thanks, Jonathan Lewis).
Cosmology 101
The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel — New York Times, 9/3/23
Just when we believe we understand how things work, there’s something new something else to scrutinize something that keeps us growing And now the wondrous Webb telescope is challenging our view of it all Look at me, says a very distant galaxy, I’m older by far than you can imagine Look how quickly I formed, says the galaxy, much earlier than you can contemplate Time to rethink what you think you know This is the universe calling, reminding us there’s always more to learn