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.

TO MY SON, OFF TO COLLEGE

We stand there in our vestibule, me clutching my car keys, you, your suitcase, me about to recite the names of apples, winesap, braeburn, etc., the way poets  recite them, then to chant the names of poets, too, anything you’ll listen to, stanzas of lightning from red mouths. It isn’t loveliness I’m after, I can tell you, it’s any damn thing that keeps your hand from pushing that door open.  Though you’re long gone already.  And I know it’s wrong, when the heart has stopped, to pretend it hasn’t.  Like a taxidermist.  No, we’re mixed up with time, my Love, and poetry, as usual, fails to stop you.  You have to go away, and you may not be back.  I eat one of the apples in your memory, like a pioneer who’s down to eating seed corn, the sweet-sour juices running into a future without you, while a voice tells me I don’t own you, you were a gift, and my barbaric unteachable mother heart doesn’t get it, thinks, okay, fine, so you’re gone now,  you’re that much closer to coming back.