#SEALEYCHALLENGE
#sealeychallenge late day 22: robert browning this time gives us a musing on writer's block, especially when one's favorite subject is their love, as well as providing a heartwarming message: nothing is comparable to the one you love's form.
January 10, 2026 at 9:19 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 21: I love it when writers from eras deemed as "pure" and "academic" write the most blatant sex scenes. Robert browning gives us one of the most passionate sex scenes in a poem, second to only many Chinese female poets and "batter my heart, three person'd god"!
January 10, 2026 at 9:11 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 20: another robert browning poem, "bad dreams" tells of heartbreak and loss of a relationship told only from the heartbreaking imagery a browning poet can accomplish.
January 10, 2026 at 4:07 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 19: robert browning's "speculative" is another fantastic love poem of his that talks about the new life love brings in us all, with his typical themes: merging of the sexed body through love, renewal, and references to art. A classic through and through
January 10, 2026 at 4:02 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 18: doing a bunch of robert browning poems starting from this! robert browning's "a pearl, a girl" uses the metaphor of a simple pearl as a metaphor for a simple woman who can be made beautiful from love. his love poems are very fascinating especially re: gender
January 10, 2026 at 3:57 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 17: the anonymous "young woman's neo-aramaic jewish persian blues" is a uniquely formatted poem with almost a modernist or postmodernist flair despite the poem being undated and mostly found in compilations. a fascinating play at language in translation.
December 26, 2025 at 3:23 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 16: eristi-aya's poem "a letter to her mother" shows the human conditions during the akkadian empire, a time where likely willful women were cloistered into convents to get them to obey. eristi-aya's poem shows the cruelty of such punishments.
December 26, 2025 at 3:15 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 15: this unnamed poem by honnamma very clearly outlines strong proto feminist ideals, showing both the harsh misogyny against women in India at the time and the ideals that humanity should be decided on characteristics and nobility, not sex and gender.
December 26, 2025 at 3:09 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 14: w.h. auden's "the unknown citizen" is a harsh critique of eugenics and how even the most "ideal" human being can have the deepest depths of depression and society just wouldn't know. it's a poem that would certainly belong today
December 5, 2025 at 1:16 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 13: "cento for autistic poets whose words offer a map of possibility when my words are lost" by derek yen is a poem utilizing a poetic form i had not seen often in my lifetime (a cento) and now wish to utilize more often. poetry is often patchwork, and its better that way.
November 24, 2025 at 9:27 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 12: once again, another stellar nate marshall poem about masculinity and the trauma men suffer due to sexual assault going unaddressed. this is a common theme in finna, and one of the main themes, aside from black masculinity and generational trauma, present in this book
October 31, 2025 at 4:25 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 11: nate marshall knocks it out of the park again with "the homies ask if i'm tryna smash", a poem about the ugliness of desire, intertwined with the ugliness of misogyny. marshall interweaves slang words used for sex with a mediation on cis male sexuality and delivers
October 31, 2025 at 3:40 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 10: "my sexual identity is a toaster in a bath tub" by c. russell price tells of a borderline suicidal, self sabotaging sexuality in the face of intimacy, past, present, and future. the interpolation of "one week" by barenaked ladies is clever and almost postmodern, i think
October 24, 2025 at 1:12 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 9: at the start of the poem "i decide to tell ghost cowboy my intentions", i am already struck by the intense and powerful imagery. with the context of the poet being genderqueer, the line "i'm writing a love poem even with an american boot to my throat" takes a new meaning
October 24, 2025 at 1:04 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 8: "landless acknowledgement" by nate marshall takes the common use of a land acknowledgement in many progressive fiction and poetry and uses it to state that, like many black people he knows, he is landless and becoming landless through climate change. powerful.
October 19, 2025 at 4:47 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 7: touson shimazaki's "nige-mizu" is .a parody of a hymn by phoebe brown and an expression that feels genuine in a fear that one's love for another person is inherently sinful, that one's desires make them broken. i know how this feels and that's why i resonate with it
October 12, 2025 at 1:21 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 6: yet another fascinating louise bogan poem, medusa tells of a horrific scene where a speaker of unknown gender comes to the mouth of a cave and is frozen by medusa herself. the attention to word choice really amps up the horror, which bogan is really good at conveying.
October 12, 2025 at 12:58 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 5: louise bogan is yet another wonderful poet i've found on poets.org. her poem, cassandra, tells of a woman who is mentally ill, troubled, and likely infertile or even transfeminine, and feels unable to be saved. a good text to read with umineko! (you'll Know)
October 12, 2025 at 12:51 PM
ive meant to post more from others (i completely whiffed on this year's ##sealeychallenge!) but will resume doing so shortly...
October 2, 2025 at 7:42 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 4: "drinking wine" by t'ao ch'ien is a wonderful poem about noticing the small things in life and realizing that your life may be no bigger than a tree, and reveling in it anyway. It's beautiful, serene, and filled with such peaceful yet passionate emotion.
September 19, 2025 at 4:20 PM
#sealeychallenge late day 3: "how long, o lord? to the choirmaster. a psalm of david", likely written by the biblical david, is a beautiful poem found within the bible that keeps me going in times of turmoil. the esv translation has some beautiful word choices i prefer over the amplified version <3
September 15, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Signing off for some much-needed rest 😴💤 but keeping the spirit of poetry alive!

Thank you to everyone who read, posted, shared, and engaged with poetry this August!

We’ll see you same time next year for the next #SealeyChallenge!
September 11, 2025 at 2:32 PM
As my #SealeyChallenge concludes the real revelation: the intimacy, the vulnerability, the pure access that poetry offers to people, experiences, ideas, ways of living that I would never be able to connect with ordinarily. #BlueSky #ReadLivingPoets

alisontcucchetti.wordpress.com/2025/09/04/t...
The Sealey Challenge & an Invitation to Read Living Poets
Each August, the Sealey Challenge invites readers to explore one book of poetry each day of the month. The most determined will read 31 books of poetry to satisfy the challenge. While I enjoy struc…
alisontcucchetti.wordpress.com
September 4, 2025 at 8:02 PM