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Hestia, protector of missing children, you with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house -- draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song. ― Ancient Greek prayer. Award Winning Poetry - 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit Museum Hestia, protector of missing children, you with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house -- draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song. ― Ancient Greek prayer. Historical pieces, these things of yours: a deflating ball, a bike not on its kick, but propped against a garage wall; a crestfallen lacrosse stick. Tours have come through as if walking the way of the cross: neighbors with pasta, a friend to awkwardly drop off a borrowed dress. Police with their pens and pads making calculations. A press release for the missing, accosted kidnapped, or dead; your photo, a ghost of a soul you had. Musee de Beaux Arts for the ambushed, the dispossessed, for guardians, who did not guard our watch, conservators of hellish thoughts, thoughts too wretched for talk. Prayers in place of a fight we would have fought had you called out. But what, after all, can our prayers do except repeat prayers from the past, and that surely God knew. Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award Special Merit. Published in The Comstock Review , January 2008. Previous Next

Index Previous Next From the book "Advantages of Believing" Beginner's Mind We have been together in Buddha’s gentle rain for days. Our robes are soaked through. I try not to long for things as your palm unwinds under my chin. You speak to me in the simplest language, Have a cup of tea. I sense your compassion but my ears are filled with water and the incense unnerves me. You cup my ears and whisper, Rozan is famous for its misty, rainy days, and, The sky is always the sky. I believe you, though I am not surprised. Perhaps the exchange should not be this intimate. The shadows near my eyes and across your shaved head make us tired and ordinary. You are an old man with dry lips. Perhaps your middle sags as you smooth my hair, my hair that was just so. . Copyright © 1978 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Williams College Archives, 1978 Published in the author's book Advantages of Believing , 2015.

From the Heroic to the Classical Age Great Works of Ancient Greece by M. B. McLatchey Against a backdrop of economic strife, political unrest and relentless war with neighboring regions, the ancient Greeks give the world philosophy – a preoccupation, as Socrates says, not with simply living, but with living well. As the readings in this text will demonstrate – from the ancient epics of the Warrior Age of heroes to the teachings of the great thinkers in the Golden Age of Athens – living well for the ancient Greeks will mean answering the same question again and again: “What should we call a good life?” For introductory-level students in the Humanities, as for the most accomplished scholars, this is a question for all of us. This collection of ancient writings is intended to expose students to the original voices of the past in “primary source” form. Unlike the historian who summarizes Aristotle’s “Ethics of Happiness”, the primary sources herein give us Aristotle himself – his exact words as they appeared when he etched them into papyrus in the 4th century BC. Because a reading proficiency in the ancient languages is not expected of undergraduate students in the Humanities, the ancient texts translated into English here have been carefully chosen by the author based on their affinity to the original text and their adherence to the true spirit of primary source translation. Available on Amazon Book Details: Paperback: 182 pages Publisher: CreateSpace; 3rd edition (May 26, 2020) Language: English ISBN-13: 978-1724212344 Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.4 x 10 inches Shipping Weight: 1 pound

How I Write: A Round Robin Blog Tour April 3, 2014 I want to thank my friend, Catherine Staples, for inviting me to participate in this year’s poetry Round Robin. Catherine is not only a gifted and award-winning poet, but she is also one of the most generous-minded connector-of-poets I have ever known. Here’s the way this blog tour works: Writers are asked to respond to four questions about their writing process and what they are working on now. This is my response to those questions... What are you working on? I like how the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz answered this question in an interview once. In response to the question, “What are you working on right now?” he said something like, “I am trying to get out of the way of my own voice.” It seems to me that this is what we are always trying to do as writers: trying to grow technically by taking on new work thematically. My debut collection of poems, The Lame God , which won the 2013 May Swenson Poetry Award, allowed me to assume the voice of a grieving parent when a child has been abducted and murdered. This work of putting on another individual’s skin was extremely difficult – and yet, I am now discovering, perhaps not as difficult as it is to craft poems wearing one’s own skin. My new collection of poems, tentatively titled Natural Law , explores the intersection of our natural lives and our regulated lives – the unexpected collision between 21st century codes that we label as taboo and that only two generations previously were labeled as liberation. I am also buttoning up for submission an educational memoir called Beginner’s Mind that celebrates a remarkable educator and recommends a philosophy of teaching that, in turn, recommends a philosophy of life. Excerpts from Beginner’s Mind can be found on my webpage. How does your work differ from others of its genre? Ezra Pound often advised T.S. Eliot to leave questions of difference and likeness to the literary historians. Busy yourself with the writing, Pound advised his poet friend, and let the literary historians busy themselves with where — or if — you fit in. I think I’ll listen to Pound and leave it at that. Why do you write what you do? I agree with poets such as Paul Valery and Yevgeny Yevtushenko: I don’t believe that, as poets, we get to choose our subjects. I think, more often than not, our subjects choose us. Poets, like artists of all kinds, are observers of the world; what we bear witness to is not necessarily what we would have selected – and not necessarily what we already know how to relate back to the world. With regard to this latter point, the poet is always challenged to find new techniques and forms for “mastering” — which is, of course, really “serving” — her subject. How does your writing process work? E.B. White wrote his most human and profound essays at his kitchen table, while his children romped about below. Socrates taught some of the most universal and permanent lessons about how to live a decent life, while walking with his students through the over-populated and bustling city of Athens. Regarding poetic process, I would have to say that mine is a combination of kitchen table and daily walks. I drum out lines in daily walks of trochees and iambics and tend to actually craft them at a tiled kitchen table in the most central of all rooms in my home. M.B.

Index Previous Next First Place - Lazuli Literary Group Plan B And so, we are not to be concerned about living – but about living well. - Socrates, Dialogue with Crito I watch them settle in. David’s Death of Socrates on the projection screen. Clashes of colors like warring teams: a white toga hanging from a teacher’s shoulder; the blood-red robe of a servant, who holds out the deadly drink. An ancient story, someone else’s fight. And yet, the old man who sits upright to take the servant’s chalice. The absence of malice. Gestures like haunting glyphs. We open ourselves to what ifs. What if someone you love, someone who taught you right from wrong; drew you a map of valleys not yet drawn; rowed with you on a winding river: the labyrinth of your young years. A chance to visualize: a wrestling coach; a theater teacher tirelessly recapturing missed lines. What if this person you love comes under fire. A mob seeds hatred, until – like trees that burn too easily – they are cheering for his demise. Why. Because he is winning in an art his accusers used to prize: logic as leak-proof as a Grecian vase. Because he is gaining fans. Because they can. Suppose, like an extended hand, the mob gives your mentor a choice: Disavow all you ever taught. Apologize – or hemlock. They grasp for the extended hand. Why not sign a pity release? Spare your children and wife. Surrender – just for the moment – what defines your life. The boat for escaping is waiting in the bay. The judges want their take. What will history say if friends do not save a man accused in the wrong? Who will teach virtue if the teacher of virtue is gone? Scales that tip and sway. It must have weighed on Crito’s heart to learn the decision was already made; to arrive in a drafty cell for a teacher- student review – so late. How he misread the old man sitting on his cot: alone and unafraid. The question on his teacher’s face: How much are you willing to trade ? We weave, instructed, heart persuaded. We leave it – not for the Midterm – almost certainly for a later day. . Copyright © 2024 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Azure , Vol. 8, March, 2025. Winner of the Lazuli Literary Group's Fall 2024 Writing Contest. Other poems in collection: "Ethos, Logos, Pathos" and "Is There a Final Exam?". Editor's comment: I enjoyed the steady strain of brilliance and the profound sense of wisdom that runs through each poem, well-delivered through narratively evocative language and clearly intentional choices in poetic form! To cloak modernity in a sense of magic is difficult to do, and yet I feel your poems do so in a very useful way. I hope our readers find in these pieces the impetus for an examined life. - Sakina B. Fakhri

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Index Previous Next On Forgetting Ash Wednesday Between the harvesting and sowing: the stubble burn. Embers recycled from a dying fire; the promising scent of charred straw. Cinders inextinguishable as newfound desire. The calendar plan that out of the slag a new upright row might spring: Lazarus flowers, roses of Jericho. All this to call me home. As if to dress me in a penitent’s sackcloth, when for decades – even now – I would have come on my knees: a girl in love with high relief; stained-glass mysteries; the lightness and the weight of your hanging figure; the promise of one love and end of days. Who else could have sown, then seeded, this divide? Who else left this shadowy thumb print between my eyes? . Copyright © 2020 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Iris Literary Journal .

Award Winning Poetry - 2012 Winner of the 46er Prize for Poetry Bingo Night for Missing and Exploited Children B efore we went underground. Before you fell through a gyre with no sound. I f one piece were unwound. If you had run. If we had looked for you sooner. If you had screamed. If the gods had intervened. N ascent. Still blooming, the orchid on your window sill. A thrill of color. G one. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Phantom limb. If the soul leaves the body, we did not feel it go. Nothing and everything cloistered in stone. O mens we left for others. Ripples on a resting pond. The whistling of a breeze. The imprint on the ovaries. Copyright © 2012 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the 2012 Adirondack Review's 46er Prize for Poetry. Published in The Adirondack Review , Summer 2013. Original version published here . The 46er Prize refers to the forty-six major peaks of the Adirondacks. Hikers who reach all forty-six summits are deemed "Forty-sixers." Also published by Beacon Press in The Blue Room Collective's anthology, Grabbed , Summer 2020. Previous Next

Award Winning Poetry - 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award - Semi Finalist At the Grieving Parents Meeting In the parish hall of Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church, pictures of murdered children in our hands, we huddle in a sphere of folding chairs and a flickering fluorescent light. Some lean near the coffee and coffee cake that, each week, has the same floury smell of sympathy and each week, the same sour taste. By the tissues, a painted soapstone statuette – our patron saint. O, the watches and keys and gloves that appeared at your feet! A ruse that my mother relied on to make me believe that our smallest petitions are heard, that events, with the proper appeals, can be reversed, that almost anything lost can be retrieved. As a girl I chanted your name while I followed the trail: pockets, under the bed, under the sofa cushions, pockets again. Something's lost and can't be found. Please, St. Anthony, look around. When it didn’t turn up, I brought you coiled vines – like the petals I bring to my daughter’s room as if to stir up stale air – and the search would resume. Look at the priestess of talismans I have become: her saint card from First Communion in my purse; lodestones for paperweights at work. For good luck, a horseshoe-shaped necklace under my shirt: the crescent shape of the sacred moon goddess in Peru or the bow of the Blessed Mother’s cradling arm, arch like the threshold of her sacred vulva, twine like the helix of lovers. Look at the virtuoso that was finally birthed, who would use this ring of linked hands not for fellowship or grace, not to make my peace on earth, not to lay my gifts at your feet and give up the search, but to summon the face she petitioned and conjure a curse. Copyright © 2011 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in River Styx 87, Spring 2012. Previous Next

Index Previous Next Trigger Warning We have art in order not to die of the truth. ― Friedrich Nietzsche This spring, as in previous springs we will have our themes: A young man will take his mother to bed – then blind himself with her dress pins when he learns the truth. Another mother will die yearning for her son’s lost youth – ten years in combat in some hell called Troy, ten more at sea, a champion of the gods, or a beautifully- carved chess piece. In our fifth week, the most promising student will stop coming to class – uncounted, unseen. Some of us will look for her in our dreams. In one, she will wave, relieved, as she sails away. In another, she will signal a code – fragments like shards from an ancient, splintered vase; runes like self-spun elegies which, as a class, we will read. A champion of the gods, or a beautifully- carved chess piece? In the tenth week, the quietest one will change his place from Enrolled to Audit – a jockeying for a Pass on this charted and uncharted course – or kiss and a roll of the dice. A look at his source. The same week a veteran marine will submit his term’s work – a dense, hard-copy, thoughtful, heap – then swallow and swallow and swallow and finally sleep. A champion of the gods, or a beautifully-carved chess piece? The rest of us will proceed. Like clockwork, carillon will ring. Gowns, assemblies, deans. Swallows will stir the clock tower – Lazarus-like – and crocuses will flower on the campus green. . Copyright © 2018 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Harpur Palate of Binghamton University, Fall 2018, Vol. 18.1.

Award Winning Poetry - 2006 Winner of the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award Sanriku The game was not to look - but feel - the slow drag, the distant rise and fall, the quiet revolt of crests gaining an underworld; to know in our heels the moment of their advance: languid, insidious. "Sanriku!" one of us would call - a notice to the rest that it was imminent, and with one lift, a solidarity, we'd throw ourselves beachward, tossing and rolling in a curled force. Submerged, I would hear that call like water's moan, or like the heaving sobs of Asian fishermen, who felt too late the slip of plates, the buckling floor, the little missionary wave passing beneath their boats; who, steeped in so much grief, never knew the clarity that follows every quake -- when there, for just an instant, the contours of the seafloor below are mirrored in the water around our waists. Sanriku is a port in Japan that was destroyed by a tsunami in 1896. Fishermen 20 miles out to sea did not notice the wave pass under their boats because it only had the height at the time of about 15 inches. They were totally unprepared for the devastation that greeted them when they returned to the port of Sanriku - 28,000 people were killed and 170 miles of coastline were destroyed by the wave that had passed under them. Copyright © 2003 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the 2006 Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award. Published in Willow Springs 58, Fall 2006. Previous Next

Isms Excerpted from the book Beginner's Mind Salem College Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award This is the work of an original, smart, and talented writer. She has a great storehouse of knowledge and a penetrating understanding of many subjects, including human beings. It is wonderful to read someone who knows a capella, Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei, as well as Carol Channing and Hepburn (and knows the difference). When has a school room been given such vivid enunciation -- the dioramas, shoe boxes, sticker-stars, and clay figures, the comfort of “half-truths” for other children, but not for Miss D’s. With a “sideways glance,” they took it all in, and were forgiving, like Miss D (whose door says welcome, an endless acquittal). It is difficult to see any of us “condemned,” and yet, there are standards. Standards! I can’t go on admiring line after line, when I am only on the first two pages in my commentary (and my language is so stupid and pale in comparison), but that’s what this essay does to me; it says look, see, remember. Word for word, sentence by sentence, I am enthralled. Thank God for Miss D, and for being reminded that at least one or two of my own teachers were, if not her equals, close sisters. While the writer appears like a new comet on my horizon, I am wild to know what this writer will do next. Meanwhile, she will be “graded,” though A+ hardly describes my admiration. -- Emily Herring Wilson, Judge 2007 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award Salem College Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award