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.

LEAVES LEAVING

They outdo each other drawing secret metals from the earth to turn magenta, crimson, orchid, sun-bather cinnamon. They wrap the brown grass like a present. Where have they learned this extravagance of  sun, this flaring so improbably into talent?  Look. This one eating fire, that one juggling silver knives. Like a child stepping from the chorus line of an average family, each one is a prodigy, defying the odds.  All summer they were rooted, unable to move, unable to scratch their most frantic itch. They will roam far.  They will never return.  But tonight they sing in the yard like violins, calling the last ordinary, human child home.