Our literary magazine was founded on Leonard Cohen’s 89th birth anniversary on September 21, 2023. We are poets obsessed with the ways in which poetry can both break you and build you up. Welcome to this little corner of the internet where we can sing into the void and remember that poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
POET OF THE WEEK
SHIVANI MEHTA
FEBRUARY 16, 2025
Shivani Mehta was born in Mumbai and raised in Singapore. She moved to New York to attend Hamilton College and then earned a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law. Her prose poems have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Coachella Review, Cold Mountain Review, Fjord’s Review, Hotel Amerika, The Prose Poem Project, The Normal School, Used Furniture Review, Generations Literary Journal, Midwest Quarterly Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, children, dog, two cats, and several fish.
Every now and then I catch a glimpse of our reflections in the mirror, I’m never sure which of us is real.
I think of my own identity as fluid and in a perpetual state of fragmenting and reconfiguration. Like a jigsaw puzzle continually breaking apart at the fissure lines and reassembling. The individual pieces stay the same, but maybe the shapes change, and attach themselves differently to each other.
February 16, 2025
Secrets of the Major Arcana: A Poet’s Guide to Tarot
Perfect your intuitive writing practice by using tarot as a source of inspiration and creativity
Saturday, March 1 @ 12 pm EST
2-hour Online Workshop with Samantha Weisberg
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What did Sylvia Plath, T.S. Elliot, and W.B. Yeats all have in common? They used the tarot deck to write some of their most famous poetry.
The tarot deck has been a source of inspiration and creativity for centuries. In this two-hour class, each participant will learn the 22 cards of the Major Arcana and follow along with The Fool’s Journey. The Fool (card zero) begins their journey into the unknown. Along their adventure, they meet many different characters, each having individual symbols and meanings. The Fool explores uncharted territory, learns forbidden secrets, passes and fails tests, and finally, completes the cycle by balancing matter and spirit. -
How does this relate to poetry?
The class will begin with a brief overview of the history of tarot. We will then explore the symbols and meanings behind each card of the Major Arcana. We will end with several poetry prompts where you will create a poem inspired by the characters of the tarot deck. -
Samantha Weisberg is a poet and professor of writing and literature living in Salem, MA. As the founder of Divine Discourse Learning, she teaches virtual classes on mythology, nature writing, witchcraft, and the magical arts. Samantha has been studying and reading tarot cards for over 30 years and is delighted to bring both the craft of writing and magic together.
