Susan Antolin ✍🏼

So grateful for the opportunity to say something about editing and haiku for @poetswritersinc ! #NationalHaikuPoetryDay

Am now at Bluesky. Hope to see the writers I love over there.

History = a series of endless cataclysms Poetry = in the middle of all this a human voice is trying to sing

As a young person, I began as a profoundly apolitical writer, but as I grew, I began to do what all poets do: I began to describe the world around me. —Atwood

When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing. -Samuel Beckett

Mosses may lose up to 98% of their moisture & still survive to restore themselves when water is replenished. Even after forty years of dehydration mosses can be revived after a drink. Mosses have a covenant with change; they give me faith. -Robin Wall Kimmel, Gathering Moss

"in the midst of horror we fed on beauty—and that, my love, is what sustained us" --Rita Dove

"the duty of the writer ... is to remind us that we will die. And that we aren’t dead yet." --Solmaz Sharif

“We have poetry / so we do not die of history." - Meena Alexander

Seniors voted to gut Social Security. Men voted for their wives and daughters to die from miscarriages. Immigrants voted for deportation raids. Poor people voted for tax cuts for billionaires. Women voted to have fewer rights than men. Police voted for a convicted felon.

People should get what they voted for. It’s called democracy.

We are already seeing the rationalizing of how we got here and the blaming of the political party that, though flawed, actually reflects multiracial democracy. We must resist this. Voters knew exactly who Trump was and chose him anyway. This is not about the so-called excesses of the left. As the NYT editorial board writes, Trump ran the "most racist, sexist, and xenophobic campaign in modern history." As NYT reporter Lisa Lerer wrote today, "This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip. Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history." This is the unsparing truth that we must confront.

Word of the day is ‘recrudescence’ (17th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.

I thought this would hurt more than 2016 but it doesn't. That was a shock. This is just confirmation. We now know that 2016 wasn't a fluke or an aberration, that this is what the majority wants: whiteness, patriarchy, nationalism, hatred, nihilism. Whether I want to spend the rest of my life in such a place is something my mind isn't prepared to consider. Right now, I just know that I'm seeing the nation with my eyes fully open and there is no mistaking what so many people I Ioved and once respected, actually value. As heartbreaking as that is, I now know where they stand, and I know it's nowhere I want to be.

Anyone blaming Harris or Walz today has utterly lost the plot & missed the point. This is fundamentally about America, toxic masculinity, & white supremacy. Blaming Harris would be part of that problem, not the solution. She deserves our thanks. Thank you, @vp @KamalaHarris

Regardless of the outcome, it'll always make me sad that so many people in this country happily vote for pure hatred, bigotry, and cruelty.

@funder Voted, donated, phone-banked, texted, and sent post cards. Fingers crossed! #voteKamala #VoteBlue2024ProtectWomensRights

Let me know if you voted for Kamala! I wanna follow you! #VoteKamala

When you vote today, do it for my cousin Alex, who will never get to vote himself. Alex was killed in his English classroom in Parkland by a gunman with an AR-15. Today, vote for a future free of gun violence.

As the great Congressman John Lewis reminded us, democracy is not a state—it is an act. Now is our time to act. And together, we will win: IWillVote.com.