We: A collection of poetry reflecting coming together across differences

A Guest Essay, by Poet April Ossmann

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We’ll be taking a break for the rest of the year, resuming our posts in January 2026. Happy holidays and have a great start to the New Year!

We love the new friends and colleagues we are meeting on the journey of our book, Beyond the Politics of Contempt. This week, we are featuring April Ossmann, who like Doug and Beth, also lives in the Upper Valley of Vermont/New Hampshire. April came to our Dartmouth book event and shared her passion for being together across differences with us. April’s new book, WE (Red Hen Press, 2025) is devoted to bridging the political divide, as are her podcast interviews, and interactive call and response readings, where she talks about why she wrote her book, reads some poems, tells a sample story or two, and invites the audience to share stories of finding common ground, of seeing each other’s humanity.

Welcome April!

April Ossmann reading “Non-partisan” in Norwich Vermont

I began writing WE in 2015 as the news of police shootings of unarmed black men motivated me to explore prejudice (overt and subliminal) in our society and myself. I expanded to a long list of prejudices including education, class, geography, and political affiliations that I saw hampering “the pursuit of happiness,” equality, and peace, as the 2016 campaign spread prejudice and dissention.

The increasingly divisive public rhetoric became intensely personal when it caused an estrangement in my extended family that lasted nine years, causing the angry relatives and their loved ones including me, a great deal of pain. I’m happy to say that the breach is finally healing as we work together to provide elder care, and that writing the book helped me to be a better contributor to the healing. I hope that reading WE may help other estranged families, friends and neighbors—and our nation.

The poems include some in conversation with famous texts: the title poem “We,” with Whitman’s “Song of Myself”; “Twenty-First Century Preamble,” with the Preamble to the Constitution (a re-imaging of the historic text); and “Peace Hymn for the Republic,” a pacifist and feminist version (written to the music) of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in which God is female:

“She has sounded loud the trumpet that need blow for no more wars,
she’ll learn to play jazz standards and throw open all the doors;

she’ll welcome every one of us to dance forever more.
Her joy invites us in.”

WE considers how much we all have in common, seeking to heal families, friendships, communities and country of incivility, rage and hate, exploring with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor, as in “April’s Cream Scones, or: Saving April from Megalomania,” which imagines ruling the world by baking pastry; and “The Knock-Knock Bardo,” which imagines battling squirrels nose to nose for acorns.

The collection investigates how we might bridge, not just liberal, conservative, and independent, but divides of every kind, taking spiritual responsibility in our daily lives for our thinking (as in “Hypocritic Oath”) —

“Do I not reek of hypocrisy,

miasmic as dung, as much

as any fellows I’ve deemed

insincere or mislead?

Since we can’t bring back any dead,

or win forgiveness from any id—

shall we let our compass

be compassion, in this dim-lit grove

of groping branches

and exposed roots,

in this wilderness

of self-righteousness?”—

as well as our acting: practicing greater empathy, compassion and love; trying to see past egos to souls as “We” suggests: “I celebrate my being, every atom/of myself and you, lamp and mirror/of all that is…”

WE celebrates the human capacity for growth and change in extreme circumstances, as in “The Central Park Five,” and in the quotidian: at an auto dealership, serving faculty at a restaurant, and talking with a political opposite at an airport, and thanking him in “Dear Attila,” for braving an initially reluctant conversation:

“for your self-deprecating humor

in referring to yourself

as being to the right

of Attila the Hun—

but disarming

and attempting to conquer

with charm instead

of your namesake’s force,

for being so courteous

as to renew my faith

in the humanity

of those with whom

I disagree politically.”

The collection begins with a non-partisan look at soul, and ends driving along a rural road at dawn, in “State of the Union Aubade,” a paean to our common divinity:

“one man with his hand cupped so tenderly

around a mug, I want to hug him—

maybe contemplating ways to face the day

with faith in compassion—and adversity—

each luminous, breakable neighbor

sipping hot coffee or eating a donut,

wholly in the moments duty soon will co-opt,

but none more—or less divine, than any other.”

As I’ve been reading Beyond the Politics of Contempt, I keep finding ideas I’ve expressed through metaphor in WE: “Corridors” speaks to Beth, Doug, and Becky’s question, “Beyond ‘us’ vs. ‘them’—can we treat others with kindness?,” with this:

Let no land, no thing,

and no one be owned.

Let possession be ten

tenths of the law,

but let the only law

be kindness.”

“Hypocritic Oath” minds “the gap between thoughts and values” as Braver Angels Beth and Doug suggest, with some of the uncomfortable, but necessary self-examination they recommend, “if you want to improve our country, this inner reflection is essential.” Thanks to Beth, I recently joined Braver Angels, and am currently focused on contributing to our shared mission with WE, with call and response readings, and hopefully some joint book events with Beth and Doug. Thank you, Beth, for excellent work, and for providing me with this guest spotlight. United we stand!

April Ossmann is the author of WE, Event Boundaries, and Anxious Music, recipient of a VAC Creation Grant, and former director of Alice James Books, and an independent editor at: www.aprilossmann.com

The poems quoted are from WE, by April Ossmann (Red Hen Press 2025). Used with permission from the publisher.