Tag: Barbara Sabol

ONE ART’s November 2026 Reading

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ONE ART’s November 2026 Reading

Date: Sunday, November 8
Time: 2pm Eastern
Duration: 2 hours

Host: Mark Danowsky (Founder/EIC of ONE ART)

Featured Poets: Betsy Mars, Laura Daniels, J. C. Todd, Barbara Sabol, Lana Hechtman Ayers

FREE event!
(donations appreciated)

>> Register Here <<

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~ About Our Featured Readers ~

Laura Daniels, a neurodivergent poet, is the founder and editor of The Fringe 999 Poetry Forum. Her poems appear in Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, and the Journal of New Jersey Poets, and she received a 2025 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Honorable Mention Award. She facilitates a free, monthly online writing workshop through Mary’s Place by the Sea for women whose lives have been touched by cancer. Her poetry collection Gentle Grasp (Kelsay Books) is available on Amazon. Her saddle-stitched chapbook, Jersey Baked (Four Feather Press), is available directly from the author. She resides with her partner in Mt. Arlington, NJ. Follow her at lauradanielswriter.wordpress.com.

Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print as managing editor for three small presses. Her latest collection of poems is A Hole in the Night (Blue Light Press, 2026). She lives in Oregon on unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people with her beloved husband and fur babies. On clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon. lanaayers.com

Barbara Sabol is an Akron-based poet living near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park whose trails she knows by heart. She is the author of seven poetry collections, and writes both traditional, free verse and short-form Japanese poetry. Her most recent collection is Mapping the Borderlands: Haibun and Tanka Prose (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025). Barbara’s work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council and recognized by the Haiku Society of America and the Haiku Foundation. She is a retired speech therapist, forever fascinated with language. Barbara conducts poetry workshops through Lit Cleveland. 

J. C. Todd is co-editor of Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, May 2026). She is author of three poetry collections, most recently the bilingual (English/Lithuanian) What Kept Me Awake/Kas neleido užmigti? and Beyond Repair. Before retiring, she taught in the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Program at Rosemont College. jc-todd.com

Betsy Mars is a poet, compulsive photographer, and an editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, SWWIM, the California Quarterly, Thimble, and the anthology Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Motown Poetry Review (Madville Press). She is the author Rue Obscure (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), which was just released, as well as two chapbooks, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, the latter co-written with Alan Walowitz. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and were chosen as the winner of the Alexandria Quarterly’s First Line Poetry Contest Series and of The Poetry Salon’s Practiced Poets Prize. Her photos have been featured in Spank the Carp, Soul Poetry, and used in Rattle as an ekphrastic prompt. She is a lifelong poet, writing her first poem (at age 5 or so) in Portuguese—an elegy for her cat—while her family lived in Brazil. More at betsymars.com

In the Garden I Am Reminded by Barbara Sabol

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In the Garden I Am Reminded

The hydrangeas flower into September—
blushing globes budding out as the older,
heavy-headed clusters drowse in the waning heat.

A fresh bouquet each week on the table—
every bloom a buffer to the hard sorrows
of our black and white world.

We must begin by believing
beauty, like goodness, will persist
despite the frost that calluses the land.

Deep beneath the droughted earth
rivers run cold and clean. Old loves
glimmer on, like planets of remote galaxies.

Next spring, seeds will again rattle
in their dried pods—a hint of inflorescence
just below the melting snow.

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Barbara Sabol’s fourth poetry collection, Imagine a Town, was published in 2020. She edited the poetry anthology, Sharing This Delicate Bread, which will be released in fall of 2022 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Barbara’s honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. She lives in Akron, OH with her husband and wonder dogs.

Traveling Back by Barbara Sabol

~ ONE ART: a journal of poetry ~ 2 Comments

Traveling Back

On our nightly walks, my dog, Traveler,
will crane toward the occasional passing car,
studying each driver’s face, maybe searching

for his first master, the one who might have
taught him to lean full-bodied into love,
who conditioned in him a fierce loyalty.

Perhaps gone astray chasing a chipmunk
in the park or, slipping past a backyard gate,
he found himself irretrievably lost.

Rescued from the street two counties
and six years removed, my cherished companion
may believe, in the instinctive sensory wash

of canine thinking, that his first master
has all this time been driving everywhere,
still looking for him.

I was the family black sheep, declaring to the one
whose life was given over to my care,
I wish you weren’t my mother, with no thought

of my power to bruise. Knowing only the chafe
of that bond, I left with a one-way bus ticket
in my blue jean pocket. In the last years

of my mother’s life, I worked my way back,
fumbling with the intricacies of that knot,
frayed with time and distance, but still holding.

If one day some driver should stop, push open
the passenger door, call my dog by a name
that pricks up his ears, makes him shiver and whine

with joy, I wonder if I could release his leash,
let him leap into the car, and then with a resolve
hard as love, close the door behind him.

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Barbara Sabol’s fourth collection, Imagine a Town, was awarded the 2019 Poetry Manuscript Prize from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals; most recently, Evening Street Review, Northern Appalachia Review, The Comstock Review, and Literary Accents, as well as in numerous anthologies. Her awards include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Barbara lives in Akron, OH with her husband and wonder dogs.