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.

POEM TO SAY TO A CHILD WHILE FOLDING HIS OUTGROWN CLOTHING

While you were still unborn our friends brought, one by one, the clothes their children had worn: shirts with secret pockets, blankets, a tie gown. And because we were unable to find you anywhere we pulled you from the pockets, we stitched a fable of a baby yet unborn. When you finally came we dressed you in those clothes. All winter they were kind. Now I fold the clothes away, a legacy refined. Someone else’s child may briefly take his turn. For parents, now, who wait, imagining new faces, I will enumerate the children whose graces became your warmest jacket: Elizabeth and Melissa, Patrick, Andrew, Kate wore these clothes once. Teddy, Bess, and Ethan. And may their loveliness wherever these clothes are worn shield against loss and pass to those unborn.