Jenevieve Carlyn
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coastalpoet.bsky.social
Jenevieve Carlyn
@coastalpoet.bsky.social
2.2K followers 610 following 1.6K posts
Evie by the sea. Words in Parabola, RiverHeron, Dark Mtn, Broken Spine, Madrid Review, etc. Poetry of the Sacred Prize & CT Poet Laureate Award for Ecopoetry. Commended Mist & Mountain, Shortlisted Artemesia Arts.
jenevievecarlyn.com
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coastalpoet.bsky.social
I took two months away and I'm still not back, not fully. But it is the beginning of Advent, and this poem moves me. ❤️
Miracle Not the one who takes up his bed and walks But the ones who have known him all along And carry him in – Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked In their backs, the stretcher handles Slippery with sweat. And no let up Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing. Be mindful of them as they stand and wait For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool, Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity To pass, those ones who had known him all along. Seamus Heaney (from the collection Human Chain, Faber) An image of the beach appears to the left of the poem, and the Poetry Ireland logo appears in the bottom left corner.
November 30, 2025 at 11:52 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
For #Promptcombo #Characters & #PromptTheme #Amphibian, a poem for my grandmother, whose roots were in northern Italy's Piedmont region.

Thank you to hosts:
@rfsmith.bsky.social
@thepaulconnolly.bsky.social*

*a very last minute post, so sharing only for fun 🪷

'Kin' in Heimat Review, Jan. 2023
A photo collage for my 'Kin' poem, featuring (clockwise): a gnarled apple tree, a chiffchaff, yellow lilies, and pink apple blossoms. Kin In the evenings, we walked to the soft silver pines, tucking tufts and wisps into the branches for the winged convocations of the downy-wise—to covet, to be taken up into the mysteries, woven with leaves and lichen, moss, feathers, twigs, spun silk: entwined. My grandmother wore her hair in a swirl above her head, like a yellow lily resting on a pond, and we never saw a frog hop out, but in the springtime, it was an ever-present possibility: a small amphibian might appear, viridian as a river rock, to sit and sing to the moon. If a song thrush thatched a hermitage, a peasant’s castle in the knotted boughs of the old crabapple, or if a chiffchaff overwintered in my braid, then I could learn the avian folkways, knowing when my feathered kin was jubilant or tired, and needed rest from prophesying; Whole ecologies would branch and bloom around us: orchards swirling, a braided nest.
September 30, 2025 at 9:01 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
For #PromptCombo #ClocksTicking & #PoemsAbout #Candlelight, this was in Autumn Sky Poetry, Nov 2020.

Bit bleak, but long past. Currently in a season of renewal, & if you've gone through this w/ family, wishing you peace.

'Remember the year a fox'

@dragonslayerma.bsky.social
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
A painting of an icy creek with a snow-covered embankment, bare trees, and a small house in the distance. Remember the year a fox Came through the neighborhood every afternoon, leaving hungry tracks through the snow, sunlight glinting low on the old oak tree? We imagined its den near the place we went sledding when we were children— the chestnut caves in Pine Orchard’s glacial hills. Even now, I hear your echo in the restless wolf- tones of the cello, as the bow draws near the bridge. I asked you, once, your favorite sound: mine the melodious lapping of our dog at her water; yours, the fizz of a wave each time it left the shore, kissing the sand before parting. Coming and going: that was always your way. Somewhere, a honey jar holds your laughter like a bee in resin. This year, cedar waxwings are nesting in the thicket where we walked in autumn. At this tangle of sun-gold and winterberry we’ve arrived again. How did we reach this place? I recall collecting acorns, wild apples for baking, tallow candlelight, sun-dried leaves. A flurry of feathers crashed into the window one night. Stunned and silent. Warm hands, placed gently on the hearth, so beating wings could rest.
September 12, 2025 at 3:30 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
A small poem from years ago, after a semester reading & writing about ancient, medieval, & modern wars, then coming across this historical footnote:

"In ancient Sparta, mothers sent their sons off to war with the command to come home with their shield — or on it."

CW: violence #PoemsAbout #Facades
Invocation My hands clasp as if upon a gilded hilt as if praying before the stone that holds the sword Excalibur. Summon in me the strength to win this fight. Walk me to the line blindfolded, hands tied. Lead me into battle, banners waving, defeat nigh. I will march on— and carry home my shield, or else return upon it.
September 5, 2025 at 9:23 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
I spent the past week immersing outdoors. It was peaceful, a cacophony of sounds each night, balmy air better than any poem I could write. Part of me wants to stay on a digital hiatus during the fall. Another part thinks it's important to return & keep building. Vulnerability is hard. Never give up.
Purple milkweed by the pond densely covered with lilies, with trees and a willow on the left side.
September 5, 2025 at 8:18 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
A poem for Palestine about something I witnessed in March 2024. It left such an impression, I told a friend about it the first time we spoke. In fact, it was the reason we spoke, as I wanted to tell someone and knew they'd understand. Thank you for this beautiful issue, @madridlitmag.bsky.social ❤️‍🩹 🇵🇸
TRAVELER'S PRAYER JENEVIEVE CARLYN I couldn't tell you where I was going that day. No, I was going to see my father, it was snowing. On the news, gray ash was falling elsewhere from the sky. Through the windshield, I saw a man on the overpass holding a Palestinian flag and a cardboard sign that said GENOCIDE. It was absolutely freezing and he was all alone. I honked my car horn, a fleeting gesture of solidarity then I was gone. Thought of his family, We the People, the complicity of the government which had designed this highway to move troops between the city and the sea. One late American summer, I saw a man kneeling beside a floodlight in the parking lot at a rest stop, facing east. Trucks rushing past, no prayer mat, nothing between him and the concrete. His children, also praying beneath the stars. An invisible geography, a gateway to the great beyond— the Atlantic, Mecca, Gaza, a place that he called home. To inhabit this world this life this body as completely as this man on this night on his knees before his God. If there is a universal sound of prayer, let it be the silence of every bomb halted, each scream transmuted into peace. The Madrid Review's Poems for Palestine (Issue 5)
August 28, 2025 at 4:04 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
‘Boar bristle brush in one hand...
he gives voice to a crane flying over marshland
a shadow cast by a friend’s goodbye’

Honoring beauty in nature & writing for political change, Li Po arrives on shore at Long Island Sound 🛶
#LiftToTheSky
@karenpgonzalez.bsky.social

Life is precious. Never goodbye.
Reading 'Down River with Li Po,' a new poetry collection by Karen Pierce Gonzalez, by the ocean on a calm evening at a small beach on Long Island Sound. A poem from 'Down River with Li Po,' a new poetry collection by Karen Pierce Gonzalez, shown here next to trees overlooking the coast. On the bank Face pressed against the porous willow weave of time I watch Li Po write. Threads of rice paper dangle from the parchment on his lap robed in soft white rabbit skin. Boar bristle brush in one hand, wine cup in the other, he gives voice to a crane flying over marshland, a shadow cast by a friend's goodbye, a city's swollen streets. But it is the moonlight he most adores. When she shines on him, he toasts her or raises his sword to defend her honor. She is the unspoken beauty he floats down the Yangzi River to follow; the one who sings in his heart. I close my eyes to listen. Snow falls.
August 25, 2025 at 4:16 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
An espaliered apple tree behind the town library, a blessing for a good harvest, and a rabbit for luck. 🍀
A red barn and espaliered apple tree behind the town library. A rabbit in the grass for good luck.
August 24, 2025 at 2:28 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Visiting w/ family tonight to escape my apt a bit. Recognizing the incongruity of reading these in a situation far removed from extremity, but excerpts now posted for 'Against Forgetting' (full intro: tinyurl.com/2skuc2tw). Recommend the audio for Milosz' book, as it's based on his 1981-82 lectures.
Reading the book, 'Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness,' edited and with an introduction by Carolyn Forché Cover of the book 'The Witness of poetry' by Czeslaw Milosz
August 24, 2025 at 2:03 AM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
I began putting these thoughts into paragraph form. I'm going to consider this an evolving essay and add to it bit by bit during the fall, to see what emerges by the end of the following season. Working draft, not yet done:
coastalpoet.substack.com/p/autumn
Cresent moon from autumn past, rising over Long Island Sound, with a dark breakwater and beach. An orange glow cast from the horizon onto the rippling water.
August 21, 2025 at 6:04 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Already thinking ahead to autumn & recalling how I spent the coming months last year. In a world where so much feels out of our control, how to also hold onto the rituals & traditions that create meaning amidst chaos? Audio journaling, quiet poetry readings, Nov 30th traditions to carry into winter.
Autumn at one of the ponds at Hammonasset.
August 21, 2025 at 3:41 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIP, brilliant idea
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

I have many WIP & a couple scraps like this; as for whether I should actually write this way or let people read it, I’m not sure.
I prefer writing gentle poems when it's about anything personal.

On the struggle for self-worth. CW, violence
When we had scales that shimmered in the sun And they told you those scales would protect you even from the men hawking their wares at the workaday market on the pier, would guard you and keep you, while they tore into your flesh and gnawed on your bones, dug a claw into your insides, slid a knife down your spine and gutted you like a fish, tossed your body aside as if you were nothing, tried to crush you until you knew you were dispensable, when your brokenness was their reward
August 20, 2025 at 3:05 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Excerpt from 'She Let Go' by Rev. Safire Rose.

I never post anything like this, but I'm counting down the days to my September sabbatical & this poem is motivational. It won't be easy, and unlike the poem, I need to say it to reinforce it. There's nothing I want more than to do this for myself. 🧡
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go. She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go. She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go. She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right. She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go. She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She just let go. No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go. There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that. In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her.
August 18, 2025 at 1:05 AM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Inspired by today’s theme, I’m not sharing this for comment, only clarification. Hopefully to mend things, and not make things worse.
An implicit peace I would never assume I had a right to blur a boundary. No, I asked a six-word question because if you answered in the affirmative, I was afraid that it would mean my friendship was infringing. How often have I described this freely given common good as the basis for everything worthwhile in this life, and said that I would be here as long as I was not interfering? I remember all too clearly this day one year ago: hearts and moons, a tentative truce.

August 15, 2025 at 8:03 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Article on Holocaust survivors providing oral histories & eyewitness testimonies to create a video archive at Yale. Touches briefly on poetics as a conduit for emotional truth (& attributes the same potential to fiction), with writers, artists, & historians as secondary witnesses. shorturl.at/8Fqu0
Excerpt from the article, 'The Humanities of Testimony: An Introduction,' by Geoffrey Hartman [O]ften mentioned by the survivors and motivating them to have their stories recorded, is a fear that their dying out will mean an attrition of the memory of the Holocaust. Every witness, at some level of consciousness, becomes the last—the only remaining—witness. Each account, therefore, tries to reach a less-defined but necessary other, like Paul Celan’s ghostly ‘‘Thou,’’ who is essentially a listener and soul mate removing the solitariness of those not listened to. For a long time after liberation, many survivors remained mentally imprisoned—a condition anticipated by Primo Levi’s repeated, tormenting dream in Auschwitz, in which his own family turns away from him, from this storyteller as compulsive as Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. The presence in the interview of a good listener, usually from a later generation, is more than structural, therefore: it is indispensable. Excerpt from the article, 'The Humanities of Testimony: An Introduction,' by Geoffrey Hartman In addition to trauma, one could question the term witness when applied to others than the eyewitnesses. Is the tendency to extend the range of this word perhaps a sign of the next generation searching to find its proper task? Secondary witness is a term applied to those who previously would have been called, quite simply, intellectuals, scholars, or artists. The difference justifying the change in terms centers on what it means to transmit Holocaust history in the form of memory—a memory that seeks a memory, because it has recognized in itself a personal core that feels empty when in close proximity to a generation struggling with the burden of a great if catastrophic event. The blessing of having been born after that event does not of itself bring relief. In our time, there is a contest for who should guard the memory of the Holocaust (hence the provocative query, ‘‘Who owns the Holocaust?’’).The question also arises as to whether that responsibility, in a society of communication where knowledge has become widespread, can be limited to a special or specialized class. It remains critically important, in any case, to insist on the testimony of the eyewitnesses, on their ‘‘indexical’’ memory, even if traumatic experience has altered it to some extent or thrown a defensive Excerpt from the article, 'The Humanities of Testimony: An Introduction,' by Geoffrey Hartman penumbra around it. That the three great Abrahamic religions rely mainly on belated reporters of an original revelation, and that both Christianity and Islam claim that the Hebrew Bible’s firstness, its authority stemming from primogeniture, is limited by an incomplete, accommodated, or even falsified reception of a divine source, create a paradigm that intensifies the sensitive nature and high stakes of the theme of transmission and the formation of a collective memory. A further question, though characteristic mainly of our own time, is whether there is such a thing as a faithful imagination. It arises mainly as a question about the Bible, whether that sacred book can be valued as both Scripture and imaginative literature. Yet the question has a bearing on the Holocaust. A catastrophe as severe as that, not only in the number of persecuted and murdered but also in damaged lives and spiritual disorder, has meant that the attempt to use fiction to transmit the disaster’s scope is sometimes met with the same reserve as has been historically shown to sanctified events and their testamentary legacy. Can fiction’s force (or subtlety) avoid a stylization that falsifies the event; might it, in our day and through purely secular means, preserve a disastrous yet human truth—transmit it, that is, with greater effect than the ‘‘memorious’’ (to use that Borgesian word) effort of the historian? Is poetry, to revert to Aristotelian language, more ‘‘philosophical’’ than history? Excerpt from the article, 'The Humanities of Testimony: An Introduction,' by Geoffrey Hartman Most of the contributors here are not sons or daughters of Holocaust survivors but adoptive or intellectual witnesses. They are men and women of conscience who feel that what happened is not an epochal historical event equivalent to other such events: the French or Russian revolutions, for instance. Scholarship or historical fiction that take those events as their subject might make us feel like close and empathic observers; yet not like witnesses obliged to testify by a moral as well as an intellectual engagement. But with the Holocaust, humanity itself is impugned; and even in the absence of actual feelings of guilt, there is a sense of being marked. While it is not always appropriate to insist on such adjectives as unique in describing the Shoah—we have become aware, retrospectively, since the Holocaust, that other massive genocidal acts have taken and are taking place—the focus on this particular genocide, given its extraordinary historical and literary exploration, has led to a very dark insight into the nature of humankind’s latent inhumanity. The task of discovering sparks of hope or effective moral and political lessons—a civic faith that will not deteriorate into slogans—has not been advanced by the last sixty years of world history. Yet some disciplines of knowledge have responded, and they include those represented in this special issue of Poetics Today.
August 7, 2025 at 5:39 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Fun campy poem from May 2024 #PoemsAbout #Oceans. Sharing now for #Starcrossed. At the time, I said: 'Not a recipe for living unless you want to feel dangerously alive! On the paradox of struggle & surrender.'

Still not sure I like sharing my own poems. It's all an experiment. @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Painting of the moon obscured by clouds over the ocean Salt Water Baptism Enter at your own risk. Every kind of peril is possible here. Anyone who has lived long enough knows this, so forget the warning signs posted everywhere. Let the sea cradle your body, and let the waves rock you, openly under the cover of darkness, only the pale light of the moon to guide you. There is truth in this. When you grow tired, let the tide drag you under for a moment, long enough to come up fighting for air. Fight for the air like you would fight for peace. Wake now. A sunrise sea is waiting, the ocean is sparkling like stars. There is only this one life, the waves will never cease from breaking, so bless each rock, kiss this forsaken shore. Risk yourself. Cast your heart to the sky, the way your body climbs the rigging in a maelstrom, saltwater crushing every fear. Do it again. Again. You chose to enter here, remember? Heave the topsail. Bite hard against a gale-force wind. Wave the white flag, never let your love for the sea or any other wild thing tear you asunder. Would you honestly have it any other way?
August 6, 2025 at 1:43 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
'we saw luck lying below' 🐋

#Lifttothesky for this collection by
@jumpingjulespoetry.bsky.social! 🌊

Julie Stevens' book, Forest Girl, raises funds for the MS Trust as she explores in & beyond the woods and also ventures out to sea. On those moments of animal encounter, when it's you & the whale...
A page from Julie Stevens' collection, Forest Girl, with her poem, 'How to See a Whale': How to See a Whale They took the wrong path and we didn't say. We stayed put, as they dashed to the front, the rocking, rocking of lives left behind - a splash of success nearby. The clock drained as we waited, waited these legs couldn't walk on a rocking boat, the silence dragged a doubt to us, still we watched, we waited, for it to come. Their smiles and pointing made us envious how they might witness such a thrill. The fear we'd miss out was all too real but we rocked, we waited, we waited. Too much concern, two stunned faces, from the dark the whale's grey body rose, lay on the surface, its mass balanced - we saw luck lying below. We turned, we thought, we didn't want to shout in case this giant changed its mind, we watched, we waited, we kept so quiet, they took the wrong path and we didn't say.
August 4, 2025 at 5:53 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Love this! As someone who often writes poems *as* letters, I'm sure I'd have the contents of each letter memorized, know it by heart, could recite it... and still sleep with it tucked under my pillow. Was reminded of this from last year. Going to see if I can find original video - a cormorant flying
An old social media post from May 25, 2024: "Hiding from the Memorial Day Weekend beach traffic. Remembering my grandparents who lived awhile on a USAF base in Texas. Thinking how letters were a currency of the soul in WWII days, maintaining ties to home and forging lifelong bonds between people who'd never even met." Below the post, an image of a cormorant taking flight over Long Island Sound, with rocks in the foreground and a small island in the distance.
July 6, 2025 at 4:14 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
From yesterday evening, conversing with the sea, clouds, rocks, and scraggly tree. Thinking I should rewrite my Arbor poem about this one, standing sentinel on a boulder over Long Island Sound.

Good to see that Ava + Guillermo are doing well...
My favorite tree standing sentinel over Long Island Sound with a citrine sunset through the clouds. Scraggly tree and ferns growing between two huge boulders covered with lichen. A lichen-encrusted rock with a pink chalk heart containing the words 'Ava + Guillermo' and the date '6-22-2025.' That was four days ago, but I still think they could go the distance. Mellow beach with a bit of gold through marshmallow & tangerine clouds.
June 26, 2025 at 6:44 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Summer kintsugi 🌙
June 26, 2025 at 3:28 AM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
If you want to join, I'm happy to say this idea was put into play by the host of 'Write Here, Right Now' writing group, @paulwritespoems.bsky.social. Will I offer myself as tribute to record the first poem for the poetry hotline in prep for the @brokenspinearts.bsky.social open mic? 🤷‍♀️ Come find out.
A cat on the phone, logging into the 'Write Here, Right Now' writing group community to record an audio poem on the poetry hotline.
June 23, 2025 at 5:25 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
This was a few hours ahead of the Summer Solstice yesterday evening. 🩵
June 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
I never know if I should hold the phone sideways or not. What I do know is that the green dot appearing in outdoor videos *is* an intergalactic alien beaming in.

Obviously. It’s right there.
June 21, 2025 at 4:53 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
Feel the same. Shared this a couple nights ago on another platform. Haven’t slept much at all since then. There’s also so much of buildup of energy leading up to June 14th. I’ve never been to LA, but I can see what you mean about the spirit of the people & the city.
Social media post showing a sunset on the east coast with the words: “This surreal moment. Protests happening 3,000 miles away on the other coast. Heart is with them.”
June 11, 2025 at 5:01 PM
coastalpoet.bsky.social
For anyone who might benefit from an article I just read. Based on my own examples (lost sibling, parent's longterm illness), I would say that while I've spent many years very stuck, poetry is one thing that has helped heal fear of connection caused by ambiguous loss.
mirthmaven.blog/2019/01/05/o...
An old photo of a sailboat moored in front of Cut-in-Two island, half of which is visible in this image showing sparkling blue water, a few rocky islands, and a blue sky with a gold glow on the horizon.
June 8, 2025 at 4:56 PM