“Tree Talk,” a Poem from John Reibetanz’s Earth Words
For Sean Malone, poet and friend By J.S. Porter John Reibetanz makes the dead speak–specifically three deceased sages–…
John Robert Colombo: The Great Encourager
(A dedication to Clare Warwick 1930- 2019 – teacher, journalist, friend) By J.S. Porter You wake up one…
Meditation on a Mask (On Marshall Soules’ Photographs of Wall Masks in Havana)
“We are only slightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.” Virginia…
Anna Veprinska: A New Voice Comes to the City
“We sleep in language if language does not come to wake us with its strangeness.” Robert Kelly for…
Portrait of a Potter – Frances Ward (plus Brancusi, a Japanese word & the Book of Jeremiah)
Pottery is an old art form. As old as the Bible. You’ve heard the lines sometimes referred to…
Cosmic Egg: Susan McCaslin’s Jesus
“Who do people say that I am?” Mark 8: 27 for Mark Haddock By J.S. Porter For some,…
Jan Zwicky is Woke
By J.S. Porter (for Marshall Soules, the most woke man I know) What would you have if you…
My Top Ten Canadian Movies
By J.S. Porter 1. “Jesus of Montreal” (Jésus de Montréal) I’m going to tell you as little as…
On Mark Dickinson’s Canadian Primal: Poets, Places, and The Music Of Meaning
for Stan Dragland We live in a country we have barely begun to perceive. – Don McKay By…
A Man in a Boat: Conrad Furey & Others
for Bernadette Rule Living away [from Newfoundland] means I can focus on the memories more easily, there’s less…
Goodbye COVID-19!
for my mother who survived the virus By J.S. Porter Good riddance. May I never see you again.…
David Zieroth & The Alfred Gustav Press
“…the sorts of literary productions I’ve sought out and valued all through my reading and writing life.” Russell…
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Poet and Short-Story Writer for Karen Wisdom by J.S. Porter The name pulled me in. It’s a poem…
Identities
By J.S. Porter James Joyce’s fictional character Stephen Dedalus forges his identity in A Portrait of the Artist…
Robert Lax
(1915-2000) for Nancy-Marie Duffy By J.S. Porter For some of the dead, I can’t use the past tense.…
Greta
for my great-nieces Caitlin and Ella Guscott If you think you are too small to make a difference,…
Wendell Berry, An American Healer
Photo: Wendell Berry “Let tomorrow come tomorrow. Laugh. Sleep. Not by your will is the house carried through…
Roots and Wings: A Liberal Arts Education for All
“We seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves.” –C.S. Lewis. for Kaizen,…
The Joy of Writing Blurbs
I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect, or…
Discovering a New Writer – Roberto Bolaño
(1953 – 2003) “He wrote, read, and watched television. That was essentially all he did.” – Bolaño’s Spanish…
Intimate Poems
By J.S. Porter for Susan McCaslin One of the most intimate poems with which I’m familiar is by…
Shoplifters – A Must See Film on Netflix
for my dear friend Nobuo Maeda by J.S. Porter “…a tangle of lies somehow adds up to a…
Rooney Mara
for Cheryl By J.S. Porter For the longest time I chose not to see her on the screen.…
Reading as a Way of Life
For James McDonald at The Printed Word To care about words, to have a stake in what is…
On the 16 Occasions When I’ve felt like a Real Writer
Books, even when you have them, don’t make you a writer—the writing, the whatever you do to finish…
An American Gift to the World: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Always, after he was in bed, there were voices—indefinite, fading, enchanting—just outside his window… This Side of Paradise…
Andreescu and Atwood: Tennis and Literature
By J.S. Porter In September 2019, Margaret Atwood was on the cover of Time Magazine and Bianca Andreessen…
On Reading The Perfect Archive by Paul Lisson
For David & Marcia Cohen “Paul Lisson sits in the Bauhaus Cafe, gulping black tar-thick coffee, smoking cigarettes,…
Devouring the Dead
Marshall Soules is a photographer who jolts, challenges, sparks me. I feel creative when I’m around his creativity.…
Greatness: Dramatic and Quiet
by J.S. Porter I remember taking my son when he was very young to attend a film at…
