submitted by starckl@augsburg.edu
English professor and poet D. E. (Doug) Green has just published several poems in different venues. Three of his poems, including “Quarantine Diary: The Six-foot Marriage,” appear in the Summer 2020 issue of Willows Wept Review along with works by four other Northfield poets <https://willowswept.com/2020/06/20/issue-seventeen-summer-2020/>. The digital version is free and there’s a link to all five Northfield poets, Doug’s spouse Becky Boling among them, reading their poems from the issue.
If you have a minute, you can hear MPR’s Cathy Wurzer’s reading Doug’s poem “For Sean” as the second segment in the Pandemic Poetry series from the End in Mind project <https://vimeo.com/429310701>. The poem honors poet and caregiver Sean Thomas Dougherty of Eerie, Pennsylvania, who visited Augsburg English classes a few years ago.
Finally, you can now see Doug’s latest Sidewalk Poetry Contest-winning poem on the east side of Northfield’s Central Park. Here, to cool you off, is that poem along with Doug’s Spanish translation for the bilingual public reading last summer:
Here there are no purple
jacaranda or fresh hibiscus
for tea and salad. The public
square is not sun-warmed.
We are dazzled not
by our bright star above
but by our snow-blanched
luminous Earth.
Aquí no hay ni jacaranda
morada ni jamaica fresca
para el té y la ensalada. El sol
no calienta la plaza central.
No nos encandila
nuestra brillante estrella
sino la tierra luminosa
blanqueada de nieve.
©D. E. Green, 2020