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Morning Open Thread: What Happened Next? Does Color Modify Poetry?
“Rhythm is sound in motion. It is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we breathe. It rises and falls. It takes us into ourselves; it takes us out of ourselves.”─ Edward...
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WOW2: October 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 10-1 thru 10-7
I became a part of the struggle … for better working conditions, for more pay, for improvements in the deplorable conditions of women workers, Negro workers, Mexican workers. Sometimes the struggle was...
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Morning Open Thread: A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be
The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.–Louis-Ferdinand Celine, French author and...
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WOW2: October 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 10-8 thru 10-15
“With guns, you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.”–Malala Yousafzai, youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner____________________________________________WOW2 is a...
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Morning Open Thread: May No Fascist Ever Drag You into Forever Fear
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.–Abraham Lincoln________________________.Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of...
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WOW2: October 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 10-16 thru 10-23
“We're not going to create a more equal society by not prodding at it, are we?”–Laura Wade, English playwright______________________WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the...
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Morning Open Thread: I Will Not Dance to Your Drummed Up War
Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world,...
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WOW2: October 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 10-24 thru 10-31
“Now we see, the ballot has no color line and is colorblind.”–Marie Foster, Black American Civil Rights activist, Oct. 5, 1963______________________.WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This...
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Morning Open Thread – Dark Mornings Show Thy Mask
“Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that...
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WOW2: November 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 11-1 thru 11-8
“Women are problem solvers, and often we don't get much credit for that because the typical image of a leader is someone who's loud, obnoxious, chest-pounding. That's not my vision of what true...
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Morning Open Thread: No Question is Ever Settled Until It is Settled Right
“I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative … I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don...
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WOW2: November 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 11-9 thru 11-16
“The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.” ―Mary McLeod Bethune, African-American civil and women’s rights leader, educator, member of FDR’s Federal Council of Negro Affairs (Roosevelt’s...
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Morning Open Thread: A Word After a Word After a Word is Power
“The language we use to describe and operate in theworld affects the way we understand the world, ourplace in it, and our interactions with one another.Changing our language changes our world.”―Suzette...
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WOW2: November 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 11-17 thru 11-23
"I demand more rights for womenbecause I know what women can do."–Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,President of Liberia, (2006-2018),first African elected womanhead of state; 2011 Nobel Peace...
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Morning Open Thread: When the Wolves Come
____________________________________________________If we but give it time, a work of art'can rap and knock and enter our souls'and re-align us – all our molecules –to make us whole again.–P. K. Page,...
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WOW2: November 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 11-24 thru 11-30
“If you’re a Black artist, you could paint awall of smiley faces, and someone willstill ask you, ‘Why are you so angry?”–Kara Walker, Black American artist and...
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Morning Open Thread: Are You a Visitor?
__________________________“A poem once read is the first note of a symphony,a toe dipped in the water, the first mouthful aftera fast ― necessary experiences all, with joys oftheir own, but still...
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WOW2: December 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 12-1 thru 12-8
“You don’t know you’re makinghistory when it’s happening. Ijust wanted to do my job.”– Charity Adams Earley,Highest-Ranking Black AmericanWoman Officer of WWII – shefought segregation and...
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Morning Open Thread: It Has an Inner Light … and Changes Us
________________________ “It is the responsibility, yet the individual choice,of each of us to use the light we have to dispelthe work of darkness, because if we do not,then the power of falsehood...
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WOW2: December 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 12-9 thru 12-16
___________________________“Women writers are the custodians of theworld’s best-kept secret. Merely the privatelives of one half of humanity.”– Carolyn Kizer, Pulitzer Prizewinning poet, from Pro...
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Morning Open Thread: The Songs That Tell Our Inmost Hopes
________________________“Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved andblooded with emotions, all held togetherby the delicate, tough skin of words.”―Paul Engle, American poet andIowa Writers’ Workshop...
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WOW2: December 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 12-17 thru 12-24
___________________________“I have to say that the traditionalrole is kind of a myth. I thinkthe traditional Mexican womanis a fierce woman.”– Sandra Cisneros, author ofThe House on Mango...
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Morning Open Thread: The Joy That You Give to Others
________________________“What wisdom can you find thatis greater than kindness?”–Jean-Jacques Rousseau,Swiss-born philosopherand political theorist________________________.Welcome to Morning Open...
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WOW2: A Special Announcement
____________________________________“I think here I will leave you.It has come to seemthere is no perfect ending.Indeed, there are infinite endings.”—Louise Glück,from Faithful and Virtuous...
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Morning Open Thread: The Road of Change Is Before You Always
________________________________________Another Kind of Christmasby Nona Blyth Cloud.A bright parched sky over cold cracked earth Our north wind stole the last tear from air’s face Abandoning a...
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WOW2: December 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 12-25 thru 12-31 - Final
___________________________“You don't master your fear.You're not able to say, 'I'm notgoing to be scared.' But whatyou can do is say, 'OK, I'm veryvery scared, but I have to dothis and this and...
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Morning Open Thread: The Phœnix Liberty, Bright As the Sun and Unabashed
______________________________________New Year's Resolution:To tolerate fools more gladly,provided this does not encouragethem to take up more of my time.–James...
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Morning Open Thread: The Terror of the Truth of Things
______________________________________“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”―Jane...
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Morning Open Thread: The Tenderness Has Run Out. Everything Falters.
______________________________________“Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps...
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Religious Freedom Day: "O Taste and See"
January 16 is National Religious Freedom Day. It celebrates the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson, and passed by the Virginia Assembly on January 16, 1786. It became...
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Morning Open Thread: Will You, Won't You, Will You, Won’t You Join the Dance?
______________________________________Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.─ André Gide,1947 Nobel Prize in Literature...
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Morning Open Thread: Half-Forgotten Truths and Reconsidering Happiness
______________________________________“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.”—Peter Handke, 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature winner______________________________________.Welcome...
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Morning Open Thread: One Music With a Thousand Cadences
______________________________________“Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and...
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Morning Open Thread: Stars Dazzle in Some Other Part of This World
______________________________________“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”― Nicole Krauss,The History of...
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Morning Open Thread: When I Was Harmless and Didn’t Know Any Better
______________________________________“the stars were always what we knewthey were: the exit wounds of every misfired word.”–Ocean Vuong,To My Father / To My Future...
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Morning Open Thread: I Heard This Morning On The News
______________________________________“We are not afraid to entrust the Americanpeople with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas,alien philosophies, and competitive values.For a nation that is afraid to let...
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Morning Open Thread: Sounds We Cannot Hear But Understand in Motion
______________________________________“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”–Lyndon Johnson, 36th U.S....
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Morning Open Thread: How I Became a Woman – Poems for Women’s History Month
______________________________________“Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody.Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable....
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Morning Open Thread: The World of the Knowing
______________________________________“Few people have to watch their country die. I have had that dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a rebel shout but as a sly whisper. The...
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Morning Open Thread: Anything Could Be Real … All the Frontiers End With a...
______________________________________“Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say whatbooks may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens?...
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Morning Open Thread: Choose Your Bread and Your Company
______________________________________“For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the...
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Morning Open Thread: Everything That Can't Be Owned
___________________________“Once a government is committed tothe principle of silencing the voice ofopposition, it has only one way to go,and that is down the path of increasinglyrepressive measures,...
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Morning Open Thread: Oh to Walk My Way With Kindness
___________________________“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”―George R.R. Martin,A Clash of...
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Morning Open Thread: Awed By the Power of Words
_________________________________“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master....
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Morning Open Thread: Robots Playing Soccer With Your Soul
___________________________“How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause; then she answered, “By thinking.”― May Sarton,Journal of a...
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Morning Open Thread: Once the World Was Perfect
_________________________________“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public...
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Morning Open Thread: The Value of Bright Shiny Objects and The Meaning of We
___________________________“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”―Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. President...
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Morning Open Thread: Let There Be Peace – So the Broken Can Rise Up and Dance
_________________________________If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.―George C. Marshall, whose ‘Marshall Plan’...
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Morning Open Thread: This is for Ruth, who "just forgot myself"
_______________________________________Leaving is so hard because your confidence is destroyed, you feel trapped. Nothing will ever feel as bad as this … You are worth so much more than this.― Valerie,...
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Morning Open Thread: Wide Vistas of Improbability Become Possible
___________________________________“Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”―Jane Goodall___________________________________Make...
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