WELCOME!

The latest news:  On November 7, 2023 Jeanne’s memoir, Leaping from the Burning Train: A Poet’s Journey of Faith will be published by Slant Books. You can choose from several options to pre-order the book on the Slant website. 

Jeanne Murray Walker is the award-winning author of 9 volumes of
poetry and one memoir as well as a number of plays which have been
performed in theaters across the country and in London. She is an
Emeritus Professor at The University of Delaware, where she taught
for 40 years and headed the Creative Writing Concentration.  Jeanne
currently serves as a poetry Mentor in The Seattle Pacific Low
Residency MFA Program.  From her home outside Philadelphia
she blogs about the troubling politics of our time, reading and writing,
and the surprising power of stillness.   She travels widely to speak
and read her poems in places ranging from The Library of Congress
to Romania, from Italy to Texas Canyon Country. You can find her
papers and letters archived at Wheaton College’s Buswell Library
and at The University of Delaware’s Morris Library. Jeanne has
appeared on PBS television and is frequently interviewed on the radio.

SPARROWS AT ZERO

When snow covers the azaleas with its hoary wisdom, and our terra cotta pots wear white hats of surrender, and sparrows puff up dreadfully in the cedar against the cold,  I pull on my dead father’s hunting jacket and step from the room of language with its beautiful, treacherous human motives into silence cold enough to kill me, frostbite so quick it whittles all to a fierce will to live.  Standing here in the frozen chamber of a sparrow’s mind, I can hear someone in the room of language: May these sunflower seeds ignite  the sun in them. May these sparrows be like lanterns that light their own way home.