Michael Allyn Wells

For a while I thought I might be coming at the matter of government surveillance from a different perspective then a lot of people. I read...

What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a na...

A few things in no particular order of importance... It's banned Book Week and in recognition thereof, the following quote by Justice ...

Among the many debates the occur frequently around poetry, there is the well worn question of what can poetry do… what is it good for anyway...

A reminder to everyone that this is Banned Book Awareness week “Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a h...

While reading yesterday I discovered an interesting sentence attributed to the poet William Stafford from his journal writings. The entry in...

Jan Beatty writes sexually explicit poems. At least that's what I've been lead to believe. I haven't read any of them but I lik...

After a very intense day at work I came home, had dinner, watched a bit of TV and had a glass of wine and now have sit down to collect my th...

Iran is a country that is enormously literate. Iranians love for poetry spans centuries, but reading of all types of material is serious bus...

It's always amazing to me the lengths many under oppression will go to by contrast to the relative apathetic nature of many in America...

Reporters without boarders reports on the harassment by Chinese police of human rights poet Tao Jun after interview for US newspaper. ...

In spite of the Constitutionally protected freedom of speech, mind policing in America has been going on for a long time. This week, we cele...

Last night I attended a event at the Kansas City Public Library in with authors Shirley & Wayne Wiegand presented a factual account of a...

When tragedy strikes, there are often words that follow. Words of sorrow, of anger, frustration or guilt. There also comes a silence or at ...

President Bush's speech at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on Independence Day in 2004, invoked the nation's highest ideals:...

AT&T moves from carrier to censor ( story here )

There are times when I allow myself to write in a free flowing manner that tolerates what I would imagine is my subconscious influence upon...

This past week I received an e-mail from Jeff Charis-Carlson, Opinion Editor for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He noted an earlier post in wh...

Excellent editorial by George Wallace , former Suffolk poet laureate & my appreciation to Jilly - I have to give her credit as my sourc...