Jeff Epton's Outdoor Poetry Season

Somewhere in the night she died, he said. They would look there for her, but she wouldn’t want to be found. I remember hangin...

I am not there to make hurt feelings worse— I am not there to fix something broken— I am not there to say what should happen—...

Oh, my sweetheart, this gut-twisting swamp of dirt and piss and recrimination, this dark side of devotion sucked away, is not w...

Thank you, my loves, for love. Thank you, my friends, for friendship. Thank you, comrades, for fierceness and music. Thank yo...

This is my first day outliving my father. His birth and death, August 25, 1921 – December 13, 1987. Twenty-six years to the day after ...

It is life affirming. Aspirational. Mythic. Who would not want to be a poet if that meant one could write like Joy Harjo? Her book The Wo...

“Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it,” the man sang and a friend, across the room said, “Those are two ...

and Something in the heart of a poet After I first write down a few lines for a poem, I might leave off for a bit, let thoughts percolate...

In the red feeling circle he wandered as though he might blow the next minute. Resting then waxing, drifting then winging thr...

For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) Redwood grove and war You and me talking gender grief and ash I say, 'God! It's all so h...

I don't write      about poetry because a poem takes      pretty much all the energy I'm willing      to spare. Still, about...

My name was Pat. We used to read Poe in bed till we heard blood dripping in the closet. I fell in love with a woman who could ring al...

It has always been obvious to my lovers and children, to comrades and friends, that I am an angry man. I didn’t start that way,...

The unnamed fog that stalks by day, is dark and deep and flips the pencil in my hand, erasing faster than I write. I am pummeled ...

I loved the moment leaving work behind, striding long, traveling lean, one job done, another to come. The way to where she was,...

Once I walked on a glorious day. Early light stroking greens, reds, and even the yellows to passionate fits, birds raising a unified ...

It is in our DNA to dream things, to build some version of what we dream. But we have moved so far from where we st...

Mid-morning. Overcast. A brisk breeze carrying a hint of chill. Lots of birds about. A jittery flight of starlings comes and goes. As t...

Thinking a thing worth repeating is part of how human we are. Sharing that thought with the context it needs to mak...

We remember all or none. There is no part way here, no victimizer without victims, no Ariel Castro without Amanda Be...

Vick Mickunas gave me his review copy of Dog Songs , the soon-to-be-released book of poems by Mary Oliver . He wrote a little note in the ...

In this moment, the world around is a perfect space. The hot point inside you and the cold point there balance the ...

Excluded from the matrilineal ascent, I intrude. I am before and beyond all my mothers, all my daughters, mothe...

I’m thinking time for the next book, fiction or otherwise, bio- or auto-, titled maybe “Misdiagnosed, self-medicated...

What if geography overwhelmed history? Left us with no story to tell? It would begin and begin and begin. The end, if it...