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, “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, Winter 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…
There are a series of language lessons on a fence a few blocks from our house. Take a bunch of critters, mount them in tiny dioramas on a wooden fence and add their names in three languages—Chinook, English, and Spanish. What do you have? A cross-cultural language lesson and an art installation all in one. And one that acknowledges the folks who lived on this land before us and, frankly, to whom it rightfully belongs. Before I quit Facebook …
What could be better than to take the exit for Brooks, Oregon just north of Salem and went your way on a two-lane road to bear witness to dozens of acres of peonies almost at the peak of their springtime bloom? That is what we managed to find the time to do on our drive back from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon a week or so ago
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My poem, “Paradise Road,” has been accepted for publication in the May 2025 print and digital editions of Voices Unbound: An Anthology of International Poetry. A project of Fresh Words: An International Literary Magazine, Voices Unbound is a space for poems that explore the myriad facets of life, love, loss, identity, resilience, and the world around us…
Something to crow about and then some. My short poem, “At Harriet Tubman’s Grave in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York” is appearing in the print issue of Fence 42, Winter 2025—in the mail soon!…
Spring with all of its blooming and blossoming is a good time of year to learn how to see the world anew again. About a month ago, I had cataracts removed from both of my eyes. Since then, I not only have extraordinary distance vision for the first time almost sixty years but the world seems somehow brighter than ever. Throughout the day, I find myself startled…
