In the Second Part of the Poetry Letter No. 1 of 2026, we present Featured Poet Nancy Murphy and three book reviews: .. The first part, found here, contained winners of Monthly Poetry Contests 2025 selected by Alice Pero. The illustrations were from the Smithsonian and from the International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico. October 2025.
~ Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President
FEATURED POET NANCY MURPHY
Nancy Murphy is a Los Angeles based poet and author of the poetry chapbook, The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence (Gyroscope Press, December 2022). The poems in this book were described by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Robert Olen Butler as "Pitch perfect and brave in their wisdom." She was a winner in the Aurora Poetry contest in Winter 2020. Previous poetry publications include SWWIM, Sheila-Na-Gig, glassworks, The Ekphrastic Review, The Baltimore Review, Anacapa Review, Jackdaw Review, and others. Her reviews of other's poetry books have appeared in Cultural Daily, Life and Legends and other publications. A long-time volunteer with WriteGirl LA, Nancy has mentored teens through writing workshops and in the juvenile detention system. More at www.nancymurphywriter.com
Barrington Avenue, Near Sunset
You ask now how I once
thought of you?
As if you owned my answer.
I could live forever
listening to the bamboo
trees whispering
outside my bedroom.
The timbre of your voice
unhinging me.
Then the path where you never
saw your shadow.
I felt your heaviness, how
you scorned yourself.
Jasmine at night,
a thicket blinking back.
Its perfume floating up,
lingering,
opening me only
to leave me broken.
And not just you.
It happened over and over.
Sometimes so quick
as to be imagined.
A moment can be the sum of a life.
Everything you said when you
touched me
electrified me.
Hollow space left behind.
Jackdaw Review, Fall 2025
~ Nancy Murphy
When Love Comes to Town
l'll be in the candlelit bath, trying to forget
how I lost my watch that day by letting it slip
into muddy waters as we sat by the edge
of the lake. It was as if I wanted it
to drop. Time is a construct, you said.
When Love comes to town the second time,
he’ll wander the streets looking for me.
But it’s been too long since I fell for that
bleeding heart business. I’ll hurry home,
keys in hand, fingers spread. Women
learn early how anything can be a weapon.
When Love comes to town again,
the last drops of the sapphire day will color
the incoming night sky. The city will darken
like a prison wall. Love will dance
in the loneliness of the empty streets,
pulsate to her own soft soundtrack.
Love is patient, love is kind.
Love, when you come to town the last time,
you’re faceless, timeless, omnipresent.
A little sad too. We’ve often abandoned
you for lust, laziness or hopeless longing.
But nothing compares to Love!
How you warm us like a sun, turn us
toward each other to welcome the dawn.Telephone, 2025~ Nancy Murphy
Dimming
Let me tell you about leaving,
how it was almost
easy. Sometimes a mandarin
is so ripe that its skin wants
to be peeled, falls away
as your fingers get close,
pockets of air under the surface
waiting for release. I was ready
like that, open to other
hands, mouths, scents.
I feared being skipped over,
not picked in time. Frostbite.
At first it was a long December
then it was spring
in my step, everyone noticed.
Still I buried a guilt that
I could have done better,
that I had no right
to ripen. I had a secret
tally of faults that I used
against myself like a rainstorm.
I made judges out of accidental
men, took punishment
hungrily. Until
it was enough. Only then
could I let myself look
back, see how smugly
we walked the streets
of Philadelphia, rapt,
wrapped around each other.
Then baby daughter
mornings in the corner
condo, LA beach sun
streaming in, smells
of talcum. Remember,
I said almost. We were once
a light, he and I.
What did we know
then of dimming?
SWWIM Every Day, 2022
~ Nancy Murphy
Sometimes a Wild Saint
after Tom Hiron, “Sometimes a Wild God”
Sometimes a wild saint will storm in while
you’re at the stove
searing steaks,
tapping smoked paprika
onto sweet potatoes. She’ll start
a fire in the blue room, open the best
Burgundy without asking,
crank up
the Stones. Sometimes a wild saint
is not exactly
drunk, (but not undrunk)
maybe beyond
drunk like I was
in my twenties after work
in bars with married co-workers.
I’m not here to confess, I’ll just say
I have seen how things can break
down, how anything can be
forgiven, how miracles are not
that rare really.
Sometimes a wild saint
is such a martyr, deadly
serious. But I’m
not going to fall
into that deep
well of belief again, the longing
that follows, all that embarrassment
when god doesn’t show up
in time.
Sometimes a wild saint
will remind us that there will be summer
again, that I will be able to go underwater
and feel cool on my entire head
and not even care
if my hair ever
dries.
Gyroscope Review, Summer 2021
~ Nancy Murphy
Night Chronicles
-“Verde que te quiero verde,”
(trans. by W.B.Logan: Green, how I want you green)
from Lorca’s “Romance Sonámbulo”
If I could remember my dreams,
they would not be verde.
I’m not that kind of girl–
or maybe I don’t care anymore.
I only want what my stars want,
what my sister name asks of the wind.
The way a dirt road defines you. The parallel world of horses
and deer, the yellow moon so close to the horizon tonight.
When particles move faster
than summer storms, we only see
in half shadow. Some places
are far from ocean, but there will always
be watery bodies: eyes, creeks, blood, wine.
Why are my hands so judgmental?
Every hair will never find its place.
When the last inksplats of night
bleed into dawn, my monsters
surface, sleepwalk, chase dreams verde
until they all crash on an empty highway.
~ Nancy Murphy
The 2021 Pantone Color of the Year Was Dual:
ULTIMATE GRAY + ILLUMINATING
They said it was a marriage of color.
They said it was a message of strength & hopefulness.
They said it’s good to push two shades close together.
They didn’t say that illumination makes the gray grayer.
They didn’t say shadows make the sun brighter.
They didn’t say eventually all paint peels.
(They didn’t need to put ultimate in front of gray.)
They never asked what was most valuable to us. They never asked
how much coverage we needed.
I would have said gray dusk is not uplifting.
I would have said sunlight hurts my eyes after tears.
I would have said I lied only when I had to.
To avoid staining my hands, I would have done anything.
I never would have dropped that match so close to him.
~ Nancy Murphy
Anacapa Review, 2025
Duende
It’s like Plaza Mayor in Madrid in May
erupting into red flowers for San Isidro.
Like a tree shaped promise shattering in the palm
of your hands.
Like caramel gelato made from all your childhood tears.
Like blood from your heart spilling all over
your white sofa.
Like knowing you should never buy a white sofa
but will again.
Like hoping the blood never comes out.
Or staying up til dawn to see fireworks on Mars,
then falling asleep right before they start.
Like helping the moon give birth to a sun.
Or playing a grand piano with your lover’s hands.
Like lightning striking the same spot over and over again.
Like talking to God for free on Whatsapp.
Like the last snowflake of your life melting
in your wine glass.
And the way cool water feels wetter when you’re naked.
Like dining blindfolded in Big Sur and crying because
you have missed so much of what is delicious.
Like eating wild boar ribs with just your eyes.
Like watching the pink-dusted Taj Mahal move farther
away when you run towards it.
Or praying that two stars will collide even if it means
the debris could be deadly.
Like wanting to drown if it meant you could move like that.
Like trying to drown because you can’t and never will.
Like drowning in Moorish cante jondo and palmas as
intricate as the algorithm of lust.
Lost––in the way the dancers ignore the sweat
on his upper lip,
the strands of her dark hair that loosen
from her turnings, dampen her brow.
The way his bolero jacket is teased on and off
as her ruffled skirt rises and falls.
How the Spanish guitar knows all my words for yes.
~ Nancy Murphy
Schuylkill Valley Journal, Fall/Winter 2025
What Is Held
My mother was a woven basket,
carrying warm laundry
from the back hall dryer.
Expanding and narrowing
for whatever we needed—
Towels, oranges, encouragement.
Multicolored stripes crisscrossed
her body like a lifeline that lost
its way home. Sides folding in
on themselves, the ways things fail.
The narrow opening at the top.
Perfect urn for ashes. I didn’t want that
Catholic wake with her cold sleeping
body. But I wasn’t there.
I had my own basket, in it a tiny infant.
When my mother’s basket broke,
I should have gone home, kept her
alive. I’m telling you, I could have.
Her final Instructions—
I should not come back
for the funeral. The funeral.
She knew. What basket holds
that knowing? What a cruel choice
I had: Save mother or daughter.
But my mother decided, fed me
from that last basket of bread.
I only had to swallow
like a baby bird.
Cultural Daily, June 2025
~ Nancy Murphy
MICHAEL ESCOUBAS REVIEWS A NEW BOOK BY MELISSA HUFF
To Speak to Each Day in Its Own Language by Melissa Huff. 50 Poems ~ 91 pages. Kelsay Books
In July of 2026, I will reach the upper limits of my seventh decade. I find myself musing over this thought: What will I do with my limited time today? Indeed, what will I do with the limited time I have left in life? How shall Ispeak to this day in a language befitting its worth? In his timeless poem, “Sunday Morning,” Wallace Stevens’ protagonist contemplates a perceived tension between religious orthodoxy and the satisfactions offered by the natural world. He writes:
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Similarly, Melissa Huff’s exquisite new book, To Speak to Each Day in Its Own Language, reveals her passion for a relationship with the natural world. There is an ongoing dialogue; a poetic relationship is in play. As poet Cristina Norcross has written, “Huff creates garlands of meaning with beautiful imagery and a deep reverence for nature.” To Speak to Each Day is structured into four divisions: I. Talking with Trees; II. Threshold; III. Inhaling Light; and IV. The Calm Embedded in Forward Motion. Stylistically, Huff is full of delightful surprises. I counted more than a dozen variations of indentations, punctuation, italics usage, rhyme, and lineage. Her style coupled with a supersensitive awareness of her surroundings gives voice to a powerful merger between nature and human experience.
“Honeysuckle” is the lead poem and anchors the whole. In this vividly imagistic poem, Huff returns to early childhood. I get a whiff of aroma in the honeysuckle’s fragrant perfume. I can see her as she “wedges one sneaker / against rough bark” of her favorite “climbing tree.” She and her friend Kim weave yellow and white leaves together making garlands out of them. She muses, “Did I know then / that I would try to intertwine / life’s found materials / with strands of curiosity / that I might create / garlands of meaning?
“Talking with Trees,” the section’s title poem, reveals
the nature-spirit merger alluded to above:
In the after-snowfall silence I listen
to the bare trees of winter,
lean in to hear their wisdom whisper—
this is the best time
to scan the patterns of your growth,
decide which branches need pruning,
which offshoots are heading
in the wrong direction.
The poem continues . . .
I will ask these trees how
to stretch my arms wide,
hold myself up to the sky,
allow the furled layers of my heart
to unfold like leaves—
I’m captured by Huff’s simplicity of diction. No word is wasted. Her accessibility is remarkable. She wraps her arm around my shoulder in the most natural way, as if to say, Come, step into my world.
And what a world this poet occupies! “Aubade” (from Threshold) describes Huff’s quiet, interaction with a half-moon evening: “a quiet observer on a backdrop of blue / I, too, make no sound / as the warm breeze skims by cheek / ruffles the tufted crest / of a nearby cardinal’s cocked head / the birds have long since begun / their conversations . . . their language is not mine / nor do I have wings to help me catch / a column of air / nor hollow bones to render me / almost weightless.” For those unfamiliar, the word Aubade refers to music or poetry about dawn or to that twilight seam of time just before full light. This is an intense moment of pathos, felt by one who seeks “to claim the whole wide sky / as my terrain”
At the beginning of this review, I noted lines by Wallace Stevens, whose protagonist feels at one with the world conceived as “passions of rain, or moods in falling snow, and unsubdued elations when the forest blooms.” I get an intense sense of this in Huff’s poetry. She is no stranger to “Grievings in loneliness . . . feeling all pleasures and all pains.”
The poem “Wick” addresses such elusive feelings. It speaks of everything slumping within her, “like a wilting hydrangea / in ninety degree heat.” Her whole self “curls inward / like the leaves of a parched dogwood.” As the poem continues the poet knows she must look within to grant herself a “blade of self-kindness.” In meditation she fills the emptiness from “deadwood brown / to a more vibrant hue.” Her life-candle, her “wick” will emerge triumphant once again.
I was breathless by the time I closed the last page of To Speak to Each Day in Its Own Language, I felt reborn . . . I felt as one might feel when the soul’s kindred spirit has been found.
~ Michael Escoubas
MICHAEL ESCOUBAS REVIEWS GLOBAL POETS… BY CHARLOTTE DIGREGORIO
Wondrous Instruction and Advice from Global Poets: How to Write and Publish Moving Poems and Books and Publicize Like a Pro by Charlotte Digregorio. 27 Essays supported by Illustrative Poems with Analysis ~ 348 pages: Artful Communicators Press. ISBN: 978-0-9912139-2-4 artfulcommunicators@icloud.com
Global Poets, by internationally acclaimed educator, Charlotte Digregorio, is a seminal work that belongs on every poet’s bookshelf. It is 348 pages of commonsense advice and instruction on how to get things done in the world of writing and publishing. Moreover, Global Poets is a needed work. While there are numerous excellent resources on one or two topics covered by Digregorio, I have yet to encounter a book that comprehensively covers so many areas of interest to poets.
As a novice poet, all I wanted to do was write good poetry. I had no idea that authoring poems was easy compared to marketing my books, finding a publisher, pricing my book, deciding on my target audience, and so much more. I should have had Global Poets in my hands some ten years ago! Digregorio’s subtitle caught my attention from the get-go: How to Write and Publish Moving Poems and Books and Publicize Like a Pro.
Organization & Format. Global Poets is organized by sections supported by chapters. SECTION ONE: The Nuts and Bolts of Poetry, features chapters that define what poetry is, offers tips that help poets develop and refine their writing skills, how to “think” poetically, starting or joining a writer’s critique group, the value of collaborative relationships within the larger world of the arts such as music and art.
SECTION TWO: Wisdom and Heart: The Short Forms of Haiku, Senryu, and Tanka. Chapters in this section define and discuss these important shorter forms, address misconceptions about them, set forth techniques and thought patterns that, if followed, will yield memorable, if not, life-changing haiku and senryu. Digregorio serves poets and readers alike in the chapter “Writing as Therapy.”
SECTION THREE: Thrive as an Author. Chapter highlights include: Can Authors Earn a Living at Poetry? Nuts and bolts issues get into the weeds of selecting a great title, publishing options, how to organize your book as an attractive product for publication, making contacts with potential publishers, developing PR and other promotional skills, and tips on reaching the maxim number of people with your poetry. In all there are ten chapters within section three, all of which offer practical ideas to achieve success in writing.
Practical Application. Among the most informative and interesting features of Global Poets occurs in Chapter One, subtitled “Elements of Poetry.” Here, Digregorio critiques ten examples of good poetry. These critiques offer insights into how an editor’s mind works. What do editors look for? What poetic devices need to appear in a poem, so an editor knows that “this poet has studied his or her craft. I offer “The Wolf,” by Jennifer Dotson, along with Digregorio’s incisive commentary:
The Wolf
by Jennifer Dotson
The wolf caught me by surprise
sniffing outside my door.
I cut coupons and buy bulk,
I protested.
The wolf rang the bell with his slender paw.
I heard his hunger scratching my screen door.
Fairytales forgotten, I let him in.
I didn’t want to be rude.
He sprawled upon the sofa shedding
grey fur on green cushions.
The pantry was bare, the fridge empty.
I offered a platter stacked with junk mail.
Credit card bargains with Lowest Rates Ever!
Catalogs pushing Sheets and shoes and shorts.
Glowing gold eyes sparked shivers
as he rested his head upon my lap.
No thank you, he smiled toothily.
I’m on a low-carb, high-protein diet.
DiGregorio’s commentary: Dotson’s amusing poem evokes the image of a bord homemaker, letting her imagination loose. It’s a relatable one of universality, of one leading a mundane, domestic life, buried in junk mail and catalogs, behind in chores, grocery shopping, and lacking stimulation from the outside world. Dotson unleashes her creative mind to personify the wolf with zany communication occurring between them. We enjoy the poet’s style with her array of expressive verbs, including those in the lines: I heard his hunger scratching my screen door and Glowing gold eyes sparked shivers. Further, “heard his hunger” is an example of synesthesia, using, in this case, the sense of sound instead of sight to describe the scene, the latter as one would typically expect. We would think of seeing the strong jaws of the wolf, ready to bite into food.
Dotson’s advice to poets is: “Keep a notebook for your ideas: possible themes, phrases that bounce in your head, words that you like. This will help you when you want to write but are struggling with what to do.” Further, she suggests: “In this notebook, write down favorite lines from poems. This can be a great springboard into your writing—a response to another poet’s writing.”
This reviewer’s work has been published hundreds of times. I still find in Charlotte Digregorio’s Global Poets, nuggets of wisdom and novel resources for improving my writing. Best of all, Degregorio’s engaging humor never fails to produce in me, a fresh harvest of motivation.
~ Michael Escoubas
ANTHONY SMITH REVIEWS THE SKIN BY MANON GODET
Godet Manon: The Skin, Literary Waves Publishing, London: 2025, 112 p. ISBN: 9798278465386
An abused young girl is found in the street and taken to safety. Slowly, over the years, she heals. That’s the story of ‘Please Touch’ the first and longest poem in this collection. However, we only come to find this out slowly ourselves. We first feel intensely the pain of her abuse and suffering. Her skin tells the story. It has been invaded, entered cruelly and she is left almost lifeless, without understanding, her blood turned black; her world has lost its colour. She is joined by another, another abused one. It seems at first that, although now sheltered, they are still visited by those who have abused them or are these ‘just’ the memories of their abuse, memories that their skins retain but their minds cannot yet handle?
This all takes place in a ‘theatre’, presumably the place where they have been sheltered, the home of Jaime who rescued them. A home that had once known love, the love of Jaime and Aline Aimee who has died but a love that had wonderfully rescued Aline Aimee once she gave in to his love and left her fears and allowed their two bodies, their two skins, to become one. Again, the stories come together slowly. As readers we feel the pain and the pleasures ourselves before we begin to understand the different characters on the ‘stage’. It all ends well, beautifully, as the two girls (or is it one?) leave their ‘prison’ and enter a world of healing, of colours and the openness of the sea, finding strength and finding themselves.
But then in ‘Take me Home’ we enter a different world or rather the same one, the same heightened physicality, but with different characters. Girls again, young girls, girls abandoned, living together in a dormitory and then remembered as we go with the narrator to a later time, a time of regret, a yellowing. The story is harder to put together now. And there is horror on the way – a self-administered abortion with a metal hanger – and there is the sea again at the end with colours and an acceptance of self but it is all very strange.
Finally, with ‘Lavender’ what seems like a straightforward love poem. I conclude by being confused! This is what I have made of these poems. What will you make of them?
They need to be read again and again. To be felt in their immediacy. Maybe our skins tell one story, our hearts and heads another – hence the confusion!
February 2026
Anthony Smith (U.K.)
Anthony Smith is a poet and retired secondary school English teacher. He grew up in eastern England and, after graduating from university, spent several years volunteering in Afghanistan in the early 1970s. He spent most of his time teaching English at various schools in west London, where he taught refugees and newly arrived secondary school students. He travelled around Afghanistan and then returned to England by land. After retiring, he made another overland journey, this time further north, from Uzbekistan to his home. He is the author of the poetry collections Remembering and Stopping Places, published in the UK. Many of these poems and prose pieces were written during these two journeys, and some are the result of themes suggested by the local Acton Poets group.
Balloon photos by Maja Trochimczyk from International Balloon Fiesta, Albuquerque, NM, Oct 2025.
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