Mickey Mouse Mitten Requiem | G. Louis Heath

In December 2007, the late Paul Violi (left) read the entries for our BEST AMERICAN POETRY challenge # 2. We repost the results today, Paul’s birthday. THE CHALLENGE (devised by David Lehman): When deciphered, this anagram HIT THE LUMP OF RICH SEAL represents the title of a book of poems by a past guest editor…

It’s a Wonderful Life           After the national fanfare died down, the quintuplets grew up protected from further exploitation in the safety and privacy that state funds and public donations ensured.  But, inevitably, they had to enter the real world.  On their eighteenth birthday they went to work as tellers in the…

My sympathies are naturally with the homeless and unemployed, I’ve read statistics that girls in unstable homes are more likely to be raped, or to run away which equals raped. Boys are not immune to trouble, you know– they’re more likely to join a gang, drop out of school, use drugs, or attempt suicide. Exactly…

On this day in 1950, Ben Hogan won the Unted States Open in a three-way playoff. What made it almost miraculous was that Hogan had suffered multiple injuries sixteen months earlier when a Greyhound bus swerved out of its lane and hit Hogan’s car head on. Hogan, attempting to shield his wife, Valerie, from the…

The Silver Jews is a band led by singer-songwriter-poet David Berman. In existence with varying personnel since 1990, formed in Hoboken, New Jersey, the Silver Jews has its sole constant in Berman. He is a singer in the same sense that Kris Kristofferson, Leonard Cohen, or Allen Ginsberg is a singer. Vocalizing in a flat,…

(Ed note: This post is from the archive. It first appeared on April 6, 2021)    If you see me in church this weekend, I’ll be crying. Wait.  Scratch that.  I’ll be weeping. Hmm.  No.  That’s not right either. Try:  Sobbing.  Bawling.  Engaging in a back-pew sort of break-down best reserved for funerals (and only…