Richard Jeffrey Newman

Generally speaking, ekphrastic poetry is not my thing, but I was recently invited, along with several other poets, to be part of what sounds like it will be, assuming it gets funded, a very interesting public art project that will combine poetry and paint…

This is the text of a talk I gave at the Jackson Heights Library in September 2025.

Contents Shameless Self Promotion The first thing I have to share with you is that I was interviewed by Charlie Finch on his Substack podcast called The Robot and The Flower.

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

I have, out of an abundance of caution, not named the Iranian poet whose interview with me I’ve been posting here one question at a time.

I have taken the title of this post from a line in one of the poems in my next book, 2020, which will be published by Fernwood Press in fall 2027.

Contents Four Things To Read Usually, I include in “Four Things To Read” quotes from/summaries of/responses to essays—and sometimes books—that I think will be of interest to you.

I stopped teaching a little over a year ago, in May 2025, but my retirement did not become official—and, to be honest, I did not truly feel retired—until that September, when the fact of not having to go back to campus for the start of the new academic ye…

For her third question, the Iranian poet quoted something I wrote in our correspondence that was not part of my answer to either of her two previous questions: What I’ve been thinking is that no one I know who is not an academic fully understands the degr…

“Whatsamatta, kike?!

Contents Four Things To Read Dividing Rivers, by Ivy Schweitzer: When I vow never to watch the play again where loving to death is the only resistance,* they turn their backs, mount their seats and ride off—together.

I spent a couple of days at my mother’s house earlier this month.

Last month, in a post called The Source of War, I shared with you the second question asked by the Iranian poet who was interviewing me last year.

In a recent article in Psychology Today called “Why Some Dads Are More Protective of Their Daughters,” Farid Pazhoohi wrote the following: In evolutionary terms, daughters [who are more attractive and who therefore have] higher perceived mate value may at…

Contents Upcoming Events On Saturday, June 27 at 2 PM, I will be reading online with Hassanal Abdullah and Indran Amirthanayagam in the Brownstone Poetry Series.

From April through September of last year, I was corresponding with a poet from Iran who’d asked to interview me.

1 Not too long ago, I received a message through the contact form on my website from a woman named Elena.

Dear Friends, I have been posting these translations—revised versions of those included in my Selections from Saadi’s Bustan—as a way of making Iran’s culture and literary history visible at a time when that visibility seems more important than ever.