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In a world that seems more and more troubled by disruption, It All Connects is where I work out for myself how to live in, with, and through the identities that define me. If you find yourself struggling with that same unsettling sense of discontinuity, this newsletter is for you.
Archie, two moods


We must not fear repetition in poetry,
because sweet speech is pleasant in the repetition.
—Nasir Khusraw, translated by Alice C. Hunsberger
"It is [an] irony of oppression that the solution chosen to eliminate an enemy often guarantees that enemy's enduring fame. [N]o one knows the names of [Nasir Khusraw's] oppressors, but his poems...speak across centuries...to anyone who has [known] war, oppression or terror."
—Alice Hunberger, Nasir Khusraw: The Ruby of Badakhshan
from “Reading Matsuo Bashō,” by Gemma Gorga (translated by Sharon Dolin):
I wonder: how many syllables must I remove
to make a perfect haiku from my life?
From “Joyeux Noël” by Gemma Gorga (translated by Sharon Dolin):
While you try ordering yourself in the midst of the disorder
of my hands, the afternoon melts like a clump of snow.
From Fletcher’s Field, by Derek Webster in @columba_poetry:
All these years, I have lived as if a thought
could sink me like a paper boat
and have tried to trace back the creek
that carried me out to sea.