Walt Whitman's Wheeling Eagles

I came across a poem of Whitman I had not read earlier, "The Dalliance of the Eagles." I had somehow missed it in my hurry to flip through the pages to "Song of Myself." Whitman captures the swift movement of eagles, the height of their soaring, and their descent. The lines are long, the verbs capturing the intricacies of the dance of these aerial bodies.  Today when I read this poem at Benner's Farm, I felt involved with the lines. The sparkling blue skies, the tall trees, sunlight streaming down, a slight chill in the air making us hug our coats around us tighter, and cattle lowing in the background--all these made this poem special. I kept peering up at the sky to spot an eagle. Perhaps Whitman's eagle would soar from the poem!

Dunya Mikhail

Dunya Mikhail
I heard Dunya read at the Dodge Festival in 2010 and found her poems stunning. She wrote about the war, about life in Iraq, about how writers met in coffee houses, about her love for language. She told us the amazing story of being separated from her lover during the war for 10 years and how they found each other, magically. And now reading her poem, "Tablets," published in the March issue of Poetry, I see once again the sparkle in the lines when she takes us to the heart of separation and longing. The land cries on the lap of the one that has left. Families want to hear more than what they are told. Language can only reveal so much, we are told in the poem. And Dunya's poem etches suffering and love in tablets so they will stand like edicts or landmarks on our path.