Caitlin Seida's guest appearances

Caitlin Seida

Lyric Life

Emily Dickinson

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Tracy K. Smith

Stephen Dunn

Wallace Stevens

William Blake

John Keats

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Elizabeth Bishop

Jane Kenyon

Denise Levertov

John Haines

Sylvia Plath

Philip Levine

OwlTail

It takes a brave writer to lead the charge against Emily Dickinson. Especially in my books! You know how much I love Dickinson. But I may love Caitlin Seida's riff off a famous Dickinson poem just as much.This poem became something of my mantra when I was recently in Texas for a month, helping my dad die. I had no idea I'd do what I did. I didn't even know he was that sick. He went over a cliff and took me with him. I used lines from this poem over and over again to help me get up off the couch and go give him his next round of pain or nausea meds.I hope you'll find the audacity in this poem as compelling as I do. And I hope you'll understand that hope lasts, like a sewer rat. It survives in the worst places. Because that's the very nature of hope.

It takes a brave writer to lead the charge against Emily Dickinson. Especially in my books! You know how much I love Dickinson. But I may love Caitlin Seida's riff off a famous Dickinson poem just as much.This poem became something of my mantra when I was recently in Texas for a month, helping my dad die. I had no idea I'd do what I did. I didn't even know he was that sick. He went over a cliff and took me with him. I used lines from this poem over and over again to help me get up off the couch and go give him his next round of pain or nausea meds.I hope you'll find the audacity in this poem as compelling as I do. And I hope you'll understand that hope lasts, like a sewer rat. It survives in the worst places. Because that's the very nature of hope.

Caitlin Seida, "Hope Is Not A Bird, Emily, It's A Sewer Rat"