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Index Previous Next Parousia A presence and this morning's shower lingering like jewels between my thighs. As if to flaunt my unpreparedness – towel for a turban; my face, a pale and open sky – I greet them at my door. Picture the scene , they ask, a harlot sitting on the back of a fearsome beast . A terrible waking-dream of a naked whore of false beliefs straddling the back of a wild boar: metaphors for the Parousia. Yet, standing on my porch, I wonder if they are attached, newlyweds perhaps, who fell in love over scripture or perhaps they present themselves like this: a final act to test my interest in the text, or in the man. Sun-bleached hair, finger-combed, his face unexpectedly tanned, the curl of his lip. I tell them to come back – a slip, or another faith talking? I say this squarely looking at him. As for ancient debts, healing, forgiving: I am going – have already gone – toward the living. . Copyright © 2015 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Tar River Poetry , Spring 2016.

AWP Interview with M.B. McLatchey Can Writing Be Taught? I have no doubt that writing can be taught—but here the burden of responsibility falls mostly on the teacher, not the writer. By this I mean that writing must be taught in a way that emphasizes discovery and growth of the student-writer’s voice, rather than emphasizing adaptation of a writer’s voice to a history of literature or to current trends in literature. I believe that this is the best way to foster originality and freshness in young and so-called “emerging writers.” M.B. - July, 2017 Excerpted from her Full Interview with AWP.

BOOKS More Info Smiling at the Executioner Kelsay Books, November 2023 Smiling at the Executioner is a brilliant collection of poems inspired by the Stoic philosophy, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying these poems, which know how to live on their own, to take root in your heart. These are the kind of poems you hope you can remember to quote when in moments of uncertainty . McLatchey is not some one-trick theme artist who will sing you “I get knocked down, but I get up again”—NO!—she’s the one who will serve you images, sounds, and textures that make you want to read this book aloud. She will bring you the taste of bread, the promises of olives, the singing of hunger, and the love of desire. —J.P. Dancing Bear , editor of Verse Daily Order Order Video More Info Beginner's Mi nd From Shipyard to Harvard Yard: Embracing Endless Possibilities Winner of the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award "Would the bad children please raise their hands?" Discover why that statement and so many more will have you either smiling or crying as we examine the question, "How do we want teachers to teach, inspire, and guide our children?" Told through the eyes of a very observant ten-year-old, Beginner's Mind is the how-to book we have been waiting for – a book that describes teaching the way we so passionately want it for our children. For parents of young children, their teachers, homeschooling parents, teachers in training, and all adults interested in understanding the loving way that children can blossom in school while discovering their endless possibilities, this book is a must read. " Rippling with wisdom and creative genius. " Readers' Favorite 5-Stars "Read this book and re-open your mind." - Robert Fleck, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics & Astronomy "Anyone who has been influenced by a beloved teacher will savor this work; educators will especially appreciate it." - Library Journal A "fourth grade teacher that many readers will wish they’d had"! - Kirkus More Info Order The Lame God It is a hard fact that, to the artist, everything is material. We grit our teeth and use even the most personal catastrophes—our own and those of others—to make art. This is what the Classical authors did, and this is what M. B. McLatchey has done with her great subject in this book. The effect is powerful, and ultimately, The Lame God proves that if our traumatic experiences don’t destroy us, they can produce masterful works, in which human nature rises to its heights. — From the foreword by Edward Field, American poet and essayist, and judge for the 2013 May Swenson Award Winner of the 2013 May Swenson Award More Info Order Great Works of Ancient Greece From the Heroic to the Classical Age 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. More Info Order Primary Sources G reat Works of Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and Middle Ages As a supplement to the wide variety of textbooks that students use in their Humanities courses, this collection of primary sources exposes readers to the original voices of the past. Primary Sources is a compilation of the most representative works from the Ancient Period through the Middle Ages, with annotations and introductions throughout to assist the reader. Significant readings from the modern era are also included to encourage the student to examine connections between ancient and modern ideas as well as discover the larger social and political questions that have defined Western civilization. More Info Order Advantages of Believing The verses in this collection chronicle an earlier time in the author’s life as well as an earlier – and in some ways, foundational – poetic. A poetic, as E.E. Cummings suggests, that is more a way of seeing things than saying things. While the settings for the poems shift between continents – America, England, and France – the perspective, the way of seeing things, is undeniably that of the foreigner, the tourist, the disoriented – and yet somehow stewarded – young scholar. 2014 FLP Open Chapbook Prize Winner - Finishing Line Press

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.

Index Previous Next 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit The Rescue People use the word 'closure.' It's not about closure, it's more about justice. ― John Walsh, father to Adam Walsh. Today in the news: Miraculous Rescue An uncle drags a shark to shore to save his near-dead nephew. A bull of a shark, the arm that it tore from the boy when he waved for help fueled the beast's palate; its tail in the uncle's grip, a blur of blood claret and kelp; the husks from his palms, a grim and edible kale. I want a shark that I can wrestle and make it spit you out. To make it yearn for its strength, to thrash about as I nestle its nose in my grip. I want to turn you loose from a palpable place: a well, a shed, a jaw. I want the monster to face me and beg for the law. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit. Published in The Comstock Review , January 2008.

Index Previous Next Emperical God So the unmovable mover is one both in definition and in number; therefore there is one god and one heaven alone. ― Aristotle Start with the known, the way a child begins. A child begins by calling all men father . Then, later on distinguishes. Father : burrower, planter of unharvestable spring. Mother , first rope and ring tossed to a budding glove – a sustenance, like air or love. Love, that triggering nerve that in the Greek origin myth substitutes touch for a god’s imperative: union of sky and sea, sea and earth. Luminous bodies coupling like first birds. Call it one god, one heaven when learned through its carcass and seed – Palm. Milk. Soul. Wing. Palm, fallow field surrendering its feed. Milk, an ancient man’s mother’s plan. Soul, a rusted bell ringing, striped buoy bobbing, bobbing. Wing, a triumph and sudden cold. . Published in Beauty/Truth: A Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, Fall/Winter 2006.

Index Previous Next Washday After Grandma Moses So hard to know the subject: a meadow, dead center of oils in green? Or left of it, this hyperactive wash scene: milky-white shirts scattered on the green's mossy edge. Rows of blanched sheets fluttering from taut lines that hem the green, that keep the women with their laundry always receding. And opposite the sheets, a picket fence that seems to frame the spongy grades of green and lime and ask us to reflect on - what? Something the women and the others have quietly agreed to turn away from. Look how they crowd their way into the margins. Here, a harvest story: flecks of red gathered into baskets. Words being said between the harvesters. Words so compelling that one of them stands upright to view the other. Is he facing the painting's question? Or does he only seem to look at him because they share this tiny patch of goldenrod and green and picket fences? Easy to grant: this kind of ground that parcels out our senses. And far, far off from center, a first or last encounter: a woman stops as she exits a dark, cool shed - stops, not to adjust to the day's stark light but to feel the gaze of a man more painted than she, to feel the thrust of sepia: his suit, dabbed on like that line of aging wood outside the shed; like the sepia dresses of the women nearby; like the silo, sepia and Indian red, that hedge her in. Roads leading in, but not to the center of life. Only the large white house, the same starched white as the sheets the women hang. Windows with shades half-drawn so evenly that they have clearly been painted on. A front door shut so tight that it disappears, at times, as white will against white. The chimney (and so, the hearth) an afterthought in browns and burgundy. Is this the cache of colors then that comes with knowing one's lot? The end of looking east or west? The fertile ground fenced off? . Copyright © 2006 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Published in Ekphrasis , Fall/Winter 2006.

Index Previous Next Urban Helicon It starts like this: the clamps around my wrists. The little Saturn ring around my head, the wooden chair, the arms still warm, though dead; then the electric thrill, the arch, the twist. The expiation just before the twist, the quick reform of madam in her bed, the spasm, the welcome-wagon for something newly-wed; or the ambulance, the sirens, the sudden lisp. It makes me so serene. It ties me to a rock and sends me swimming. It causes quite a scene to feel the wood and stone become a dock; to hear the pastoral in stillness singing. . Copyright © 1982 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Cold Mountain Review , Spring 2016. Listen to the author's audio version on Cold Mountain Review's website .

Index Previous Next We leave the beaches for the tourists, mostly and the history of tourism, a history of our shadow selves: wing-prints of fallen angels in shimmering sand, flapping, flapping – the soul’s earth mapping or a mating dance. Mouths, an upturned string of shells opening to a vast and mythical sky. These are the things they leave behind. A paddleball court etched in the muddy flats where a ruddy turnstone makes his nest’s scrapes, space for a female’s eggs; and seagulls dive for nacho chips and funnel cake; and the sanderling’s shrill song is the echo of a mother’s plea to her children out too deep. These are the calls we hear in our sleep. Or, the black-bellied plover’s plaintive call as he circles the shore for a sandworm or a crab – or for something, something to eat – and absently darts toward a sand castle made from plastic-cup molds and a child’s empty pail, pink or lime green or gold. And a wave with a biblical thrust catches them off guard: a torrent of coconut oil and ocean spray, a sandal, a drugstore romance – then the bright, shallow meadows and plank. Kitsch in a tide’s eternal crawl and roll and spray. Song and refrain. . Copyright © 2018 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Saw Palm: Florida L iterature and Art , Issue 13. Forthcoming in the anthology Pushpins of Paradise, University Press of Florida.

Published Poetry Translations: Title Portuguese Journal Author 1 LITTLE BY LITTLE A POUCO E POUCO Ezra Maria Teresa Horta 2 THE LEAVES AS FOLHAS Ezra Maria Teresa Horta 3 THE HAND AND THE WRITING A MÃO E A ESCRITA Ezra Maria Teresa Horta 4 POEM POEMA Springhouse Maria Teresa Horta 5 FROM THE BEGINNING AB INITIO Springhouse Maria Teresa Horta 6 ANTICIPATION ESPERA Springhouse Maria Teresa Horta 7 IDEALIZATION IDEALIZAÇÃO Springhouse Maria Teresa Horta 8 FROM MUTINY TO MUTINY DE MOTIM EM MOTIM Metamorphoses Maria Teresa Horta 9 DELIRIUMS DELÍRIOS Metamorphoses Maria Teresa Horta 10 FURTIVE STEPS TRAÇOS FURTIVOS Metamorphoses Maria Teresa Horta 11 POEM AFTER POEM POEMA A POEMA Metamorphoses Maria Teresa Horta 12 FROM LIBERTY TO LIBERTY DE LIBERDADE EM LIBERDADE Inventory Maria Teresa Horta 13 GREED AVIDEZ Inventory Maria Teresa Horta 14 MY SUSTENANCE MEU ALIMENTO Inventory Maria Teresa Horta 16 THE CONDITION OF THE VERSES DA CONDIÇÃO DOS VERSOS Alchemy Maria Teresa Horta 17 VERSES VERSOS SWWIM Maria Teresa Horta