My second post is up at poetree -- On poetry, Judaism, and being (or not being) a "religious poet". Here's how it begins:

A bit more than ten years ago I took my MFA at Bennington. It was an amazing experience. I still miss the ways in which being a poetry grad student gave me "permission" to focus on poetry. (It's a little bit analagous to how being a rabbinic student, later on, gave me permission to focus on Judaism and Torah.) But back when I was a Benningtonian, I did not think I would go to rabbinic school. On the contrary, I felt that Judaism and I were on the outs. And yet I found myself somehow irresistably drawn to reading Jewish literature, and to writing poems which had Judaic content...

Read the whole thing at poetree -- including the new poem "Morning Practice," written just this week -- and then feel free to join the conversation there.