It boggles the mind, my mind, that it has been twenty years! since I first launched this website, www.nancyflynn.com, with the graphic design wizardry of my dear friend, Cynthia Frazier-Rogers. In 2004—when W. Bush was the President, when we were mired in that tragic folly of the Iraq war, when I was still in my freaking forties!—I remember regularly monitoring the ICANN domain name registry. I was waiting to pounce on and (hopefully) reclaim the .com version of my name…
My poem, “Another Catalog of the Ending,” was featured as the poem of the day on August 22, 2025 online at Second Coming. Second Coming is a poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House and his fascist regime and is edited by Michael Broder. Second Coming is a project of Indolent Books
Here is my (mostly accurate) running life list of my published writing—print and online—in descending chronological order of the year of publication. Sadly, a number of these journals, magazines, and website are no longer publishing—the fate of so much literary these takes of screen supremacy over words. Still, gratitude to all the venues who continue to put the word out there. Even when the odds (and finances) are against success…
We have to replace the wall-to-wall carpeting in the upstairs floor of our 1938 house. It is worn out. Wrinkled, falling apart, let alone desperately in need of a cleaning. It was installed by the previous owners of this house whose daughter had the knotty pine room that is my writing studio as her bedroom. We have now been here for seventeen years so the carpet is likely twenty-five years old or more. Beyond its life expectancy according to the rug guys at Linoleum City on SE MLK Boulevard …
Two of my poems have been accepted for publication in the September 2025 edition of Halfway Down the Stairs with its theme of “Muse.” Halfway Down the Stairs is (per their website) “a quarterly literary magazine established in 2005 to publish cutting-edge fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by talented writers. New issues are published every March, June, September, and December.”
We went on a long, long drive in our relatively new electric car—nine nights, ten days. First to Walla Walla, Washington then northwest toward the Canadian border on mostly two-land roads via places like Moses Lake and Coulee City and Omak. Crossed the border into Osoyoos, British Columbia and Voila!—an immediate shift of the so-called vibes as we explored the drop-dead-gorgeous lake/wine/orchard landscape of the Okanagan region…
My poem, “the pattern of vanishing,” has been accepted for publication in the IHRAM Publishes 2025 Rapid Response Anthology with the theme of “America’s Slide Towards Authoritarianism.” IHRAM stands for the International Human Rights Art Movement and was founded out of artist-activist Tom Block’s passion to use creativity to spur positive social change. According to their website, IHRAM works to “bring together all members of society through our programming…
I was overjoyed to have two of my poems published in the spring/summer 2025 issue of the literary journal, Fence. Maybe it is because the way I feel about poetry—and writing in general—meshes with their raison d’être. From their website:
“Fence is committed to publishing from the outside and the inside of established communities of writing, seeking always to interrogate, collaborate with, and bedevil all the systems that bring new writing to light…
After this shameful week in the United States Senate, later in the House of Representatives, and today when Felon 47 takes out his Sharpie and scrawls his illegible nonsense on a bill that should never have been sanctioned let alone. Instead, give a listen to a reading of this scathing speech by the Honorable Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” as orated by his descendants. Douglass delivered this speech to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852. So much of what he speaks to is tragically still relevant today…
The photo on this post is of one oh-so-lovely blossom from one of the three snow leaf hydrangeas that grace our front yard. The simple beauty of flowers, of the green inspiration that surrounds me here in my little corner of Portland, Oregon paradise is sorely needed right about now. I took this snapshot yesterday when I was deeply in pursuit of beauty…
My cento, “On Not Looking Away,” is appearing in the print issue of Fence 42, Spring/Summer 2025 and on their website. It is composed of alternating first and last lines of poems in The Voice That Is Great within Us, edited by Hayden Carruth. These seventeen lines are by the following poets: James Wright; T.S. Eliot; Ezra Pound; Elinor Wylie; H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); e.e. cummings; Adrienne Rich; Henry Rago; Paul Goodman; James Dickey; Patricia Low; William Carlos Williams; Ivor Winters; James Wright; Jim Harrison; Archibald MacLeish; Louise Bogan; and Kenneth Patchen…
