The next is a visitor submit* of poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman, professor of philosophy at Brown College.
To Academics Who Hope to Encourage Their College students
I by no means had a trainer extra inspiring than Ms. Burr.
She led me to resolve that I’d by no means be like her.
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To These Who Suppose the Unexamined Life is Not Value Dwelling
Lloyd at all times acts with out considering.
Reflection is hardly for him.
Lillian’s thoughts has been shrinking.
Dementia is making her dim.
Each discover enjoyment in dwelling.
So don’t be so able to scoff.
Why are you so unforgiving?
How harsh to be writing them off.
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To Cynthia Ozick**
Aesthetics and logic,
Injustice and warfare:
Philosophers ponder
These matters and extra.
We needn’t relinquish
This various focus.
Our area could be meager
With just one locus.
**The novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick says, “Novelists, poets, philosophers and theologians agree: Mortality, that relentless regulation of common carnage, is the only worthy human preoccupation.”
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In Reward of Campus Tradition Wars***
A campus that’s really free
Has denizens who disagree.
There isn’t any tradition warfare
In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-4.
***A barely completely different model of this poem appeared in The Wall Avenue Journal, October 11, 2018.