Poetic Purpose - Jan 2026
A toad in her burrow waiting for the waters to warm.
Hello! It’s taken nearly the whole month for me to find myself here, in newsletter mode. My greeting for the new year comes from my winter attic cave, snow falling as I write, inches of white building in size, drifting across the garden to make small hills in various styles. It’s beautiful, quiet and extremely cold.
I don’t think there will be a consistent free monthly newsletter this year. I imagine it will come out of me in spurts, whenever I feel like I have something to share. I’ll keep up with my monthly personal essays for paid subscribers. Most days, I’m still floating along without the clarity of purpose that used to guide me before my big ego-death this past summer. I’m fine with this undulation and enjoying the formlessness, for now.
I’m back in the classroom again, teaching with InsideOut, bringing poetry into various schools around this frozen city. I realized that I’ve never had the opportunity over the last four years to simply teach, without the distraction of book promotion, without the focus of writing a new collection or working to secure Poem Forest. It’s a new type of creative experiment, to become a better teacher, to put all of my attention on the craft of poetic education, and I’m interested in what I’ll uncover with this discipline. When I told my colleague about this year of dedicated focus on classroom programing she said, “wow, what a luxury.” I hadn’t thought of it that way and it made me smile. Teaching is hard, exhausting on a level that isn’t comparable to anything else I’ve known, but overall the thing that it gives me no matter what is hope.
Being with these students, hearing them express themselves, watching them open up through poetry is a gift to witness and nurture. I’m feeling luxurious gratitude to be in such a position as the headlines inflame and break us daily. These children didn’t choose this world. It’s obviously hard on them, they all have unique struggles, their future must seem like a heap of hidden possibility under piles of darkness, and still the poetry pours out of them.
One boy in a third-grade class, a Spanish speaker, talked with his teacher through a translator while we discussed the effects of winter. He named “the toad in her burrow, waiting for the waters to warm.” This moved me—the word burrow, the phrasing of the line, the poetry of a single sentence; I thought, that toad is me! He could tell I loved it as our smiles matched.
Today, I’m not able to craft a lesson about the greater good or even draft a list of ways to connect with community. My mind is under the shroud of the season, murky and slow. But as the month comes to an end and the new year feels fully under foot, I can only say that it’s typically the people outside of myself who help make our world a place I long to protect and love. When I read the news articles and see the images of death-bringers, I hold fast to my connections in real time, with these students who want to discuss what happens to the flower seeds under the snow, who want to explore the purpose of a stanza and explain how poetry is indeed song. They know the heart of Life isn’t even close to quitting and I know this truth, too, because it blooms in their curious eyes. I aim to stay like them as much as possible. Open. Ready for more. Steadfast in my efforts. Breathing, being and writing.
Thank you for doing the same. I send my love and appreciation far and wide.
If you like to listen to me talk about earth and poetry, here’s a new podcast conversation that felt very good to make:
If you are a teacher, parent, or anyone who works with children, I recently read and used this amazing book Rhyme Schemer in the classroom and gosh it is genius. It works with many themes that feel important right now including poetry, self-expression, and anti-bullying. I highly recommend it.
I’ll leave you with this perfect zinger of a poem from Maggie Nelson’s poetry collection “The Latest Winter” that I’m currently re-reading. I had to type it out to bring it here, a meditative task that felt wonderful to do. A big block of text that makes me laugh and moan in deep relation. We all need sips of hope in order to keep moving forward and poetry so often fills my cup, shows me that I’m not alone in the thick tangle of it all. I hope it also gives you something, even just a little spark.
Infinite Thanks,
Jacqueline