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.

STAYING POWER

               –In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at                  the International convention of Atheists.                  1929 Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts outside and question the metal sky, longing to have the fight settled, thinking I can’t go on like this, and finally I say all right, it is improbable, all right, there is no God.  And then as if I’m focusing a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up. It’s the attention, maybe, to what isn’t there that makes the notion flare like a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon spraying it with the hose to put it out.  Even on an ordinary day when a friend calls, tells me they’ve found melanoma, complains that the hospital is cold, I whisper, God. God, I say as my heart turns inside out. Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck, wipe its face, set it down on the lawn, and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire again, which–though they say it doesn’t exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.  Oh, we have only so many words to think with.  Say God’s not fire, say anything, say God’s a phone, maybe.  You know you didn’t order a phone, but there it is.  It rings.  You don’t know who it could be.  You don’t want to talk, so you pull out the plug.  It rings.  You smash it with a hammer till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbered up metal bits.  It rings again.  You pick it up and a voice you love whispers hello.