During Christmas, the enchantment often revolves around Santa Claus, yet the true essence lies in its origin – the 4th-century Christian Bishop Saint Nicholas. Orphaned and blessed with wealth, he became renowned for his generosity, particularly towards children and the impoverished. Driven by Christ's call to serve the needy, Saint Nicholas left a remarkable legacy and a beacon of light in a dark world.

.

The dreamcatcher is an American Indian craft item, and its symbolism can certainly serve as a muse for poetic exploration. Both dreamcatchers and poetry can explore the ethereal and imaginative realms, and like a dreamcatcher, the poet can draw inspiration from cultural symbols and rituals, incorporating them into our work to convey a sense of connection to heritage or the spiritual. Both serve as vessels for encapsulating the intangible aspects of life, whether it be the beauty of dreams or the complexities of human emotion. This poem is written in the rampage, a poetic form of 8 lines and 85 syllables that depends on an interior rhyme scheme and was crafted by Robert Bly.

The ghazal (pronounced “guzzle”) is a form of amatory poem or ode use here. It originates in Arabic poetry. Medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poet. In the Persian tradition, each couplet was of the same meter and length, and the subject matter included both erotic longing and religious belief or mysticism.

The late Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, Gabriela Mistral, was born this week in 1889. This series of free-form haikus follows my journey into her Andean birthplace, deep within the Valle de Elqui.

Poetry has a very particular relationship with time. Sometimes we can feel the instance of a curious corner of an experience, even from years past.

This poem is written in the classical sonnet form. The setting is northwest Costa Rica, following an afternoon excursion from the Pacific Coast up into the mountains of the Hojancha canton. This area was originally inhabited by the Chorotega indigenous tribe, who occupied the Nicoya Peninsula during the pre-Columbian era; their tribal reach extended to Lake Nicaragua.

Written in the very structured poetic rondeau form, this poem looks at lost artifacts of the Texas Hill Country as symbolic of the region’s harsh nature.