Words from the Heart

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing my friend and fellow poet, Dr. Pearl Ketover Prilik about her lastest chapbook, Rachmones - Poems of Compassion, which will be "coming soon."  Pearl is an gifted writer and it is a joy to share her interview with you all. I hope you will find something that touches your heart and soul in the following. ~~~ Pearl, I am really enthralled with your new book...the poems are so personal, yet so universal! Thank you for sharing them with me.  Thank you Linda, it means a great deal to me to hear that you enjoyed the poems.   Could you tell us a bit about who you are, what you do professionally and why you write poetry?  First of all, I think it was a wonderful intervention of the universe that this interview came to me via my commenting on a wonderful poem of your own. In what I term a “previous life-time,” I was a teacher of English and Reading in NYC and prior to that -- a long story in itself -- ra...

With the advent of the "Me, too" campaign, I have seen a disturbing rise in the use of the word bitch on social media. What is disturbing is that young women are using this word to describe themselves. Why, I ask? When we coop words that have been used to denegrate, demean and dehumanize people to identify ourselves, we are giving our power away, not strengthing it. This form of identity is akin to the idea of "if you can't beat them, join them." Do we, as women, really want to do that? This blog was built on the belief that words hold power. They can hurt, as well as heal. We decide in our day-to-day use of language, which we want to promote.  So, let's step back for a moment and look at the etymology of the word, bitch.  " bitch (n.)Old English bicce "female dog," probably from Old Norse bikkjuna "female of the dog" (also of the fox, wolf, and occasionally other beasts), which is of unknown origin. Grimm derives the Old...