“Season’s Wishes” are in order. May this year-end take away the misery of war and bring us a joyous life of peace.

“Tell Me” by The Rev. Ms. Julia Carter Aldrich (b: 1930, Webster Groves, Missouri — d: 21 June 2020, Cummington, Massachusetts)

“Sailing to Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats (born 13 June 1865, Sandymount, Dublin, Ireland — died 28 January 1939, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France)

“The Artist Orpheus” by Donald Justice (12 August 1925 – 6 August 2004 in Iowa City, Iowa, United States)

“Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa (born 29 April 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, United States)

“Mercy” by Tyehimba Jess (born 18 April 1965 in Detroit, Michigan, United States)

“Remember” by Joy Harjo (born 9 May 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States)

“The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke (Born August 3, 1887, Rugby, Warwickshire, England; died April 23, 1915, Skyros, Greece)

“The Great Fires” by Jack Gilbert (Born February 18, 1925, Pittsburgh; died November 13, 2012, Berkeley, California)

“For Warmth” by Thích Nhất Hạnh (11 Oct 1926-22 Jan 2022) He was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, poet and teacher.

“Le Chien” by Billy Collins (This poem turns a simple encounter with a dog into a meditation on attention, affection, and the small, disarming moments that reorient our sense of what matters).

“Paris to Maryville,” by Rethabile Masilo (Yes, I’m a Maryville, Blount County, East Tennessee Scot for life)

“The Afternoon Sun” by C. P. Cavafy (He’s widely considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century).

“The Insusceptibles,” by Adrienne Rich (born on 16 May 1929, in Baltimore, Maryland, the elder daughter of a Jewish physician father and a Protestant musician mother.

“The Swan,” by Mary Oliver (born 10 Sept 1935, died 17 Jan 2019.​ Her most famous book, “American Primitive” (1983), won the Pulitzer.

“Will Power,” by Henry Zolinsky, who was a US Objectivist poet and friend of Whittaker Chambers, Meyer Schapiro, and Louis Zukofsky.

“Heal The People,” by Rethabile Masilo. (Born in Morija, Lesotho, in 1961. Currently preparing a “New and Selected” manuscript.

“Like Rousseau,” by Amiri Baraka. (Born in Newark in 1934, Baraka, who died in 2014, revolutionised American literary activism)

“Feeling Fucked Up,” by Etheridge Knight. (Knight was born in Corinth, Mississippi. While still a teenager, he joined the army to serve in the Korea war.)

“Eating Poetry,” by Mark Strand. (Many of his poems are nostalgic, recalling the bays, fields, boats, and pine forests of his Prince Edward Island childhood)