Gerard Sarnat

Late-phase often graphic poet arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a 2025 retrospective. His work’s been widely published; including four collections; by Rattle, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Gravity of the Thing, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago, Virginia and Alabama university presses. He’s a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, six grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters.

“Compensatory Daemon” and “From One Child’s Partner”

One heart one bod
experience at first handsy
escalating intimacy
Poetry

“dep sesh,” “sadhu,” and “Missus Oxygen Kisses Mister Dynamite’s Heart”

loci of suffering’s
my measly attempt
to lower stress level

a crying need warns
me off phantasmagoric
pathologist’s post-mortem
Poetry
Issue 69, January 2023
Issues Archive

Ukraine, War Resistance, Hopes for Peace, Human Rights

Stretched over 4.2 square miles, the Azovstal steel complex
is/ was a sprawling warren of rail lines, warehouses, coal furnaces, factories, chimneys
above essentially an underground city of tunnels seen as ideal for guerrilla warfare.
Poetry
Issue 63, July 2022
Issues Archive

“Up & Down Or Cutting Across Chess Boards Which Aren’t Best Metaphors, Hear Songs Of Our Earth While You Can” and “End As Beginning As…?”

Just as Technology
has shifted from
being a vertical —
organizationally
in a stack above or
below other usual
equal silos
Poetry
Issue 36, April 2020
Issues Archive

“Really Ready to Rumble?”

Made my bones playing ledgeball on the block, but during college
no taxi’d drive back into the Southside snatch-‘n-grab boarded up
storefronts below Chicago’s elevated trains. Hertz’d have none of it;
Poetry
Issue 26, June 2019
Issues Archive

“Primetime Jabberwock, Harry Didn’t Clown Around,” “Septuagenarian’s Stroller Soundtrack,” and “Clownpourri”

Let’s not get mathy Cathy or walk
away Resnais but Colonel Tibbets’
Enola Gay thunderous mushroom
fireburst above Hiroshima mon amour
41 days before I’m born instantly
zapped 79,831, perhaps somewhat
more than a third of that once
gorgeous city’s population —
it was filmed for our viewing
pleasure by a companion B-29
ironically named Necessary Evil
Poetry
Issue 22, February 2019
Issues Archive

“Yo-yo”, “Ephemera” and “Bowels of Nursery”

Yo-Yo Epic refereed over-the-moon contests were sponsored by Duncan Toys Inc outside the best local movie theater where we saw twenty-five cartoons for a quarter. Plus the raffle winner with the luckiest ticket got to bring a box of chocolates home to mother.
Poetry
Issue 12, August 2018
Issues Archive

“The Dedekind Cut”, “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization, Son Caught In The Middle” and “Laundromat 1, 2, 3…9”

Ever heard of the “Dedekind Cut?” Sarnat explains the second part as the “partitioning of philosophical arguments,” and goes on to reveal an ironic vulnerability in “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization . . . .”
Poetry
Issue 7, November 2017
Issues Archive

Gerard Sarnat

Late-phase often graphic poet arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a 2025 retrospective. His work’s been widely published; including four collections; by Rattle, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Gravity of the Thing, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago, Virginia and Alabama university presses. He’s a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, six grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters.

“Compensatory Daemon” and “From One Child’s Partner”

One heart one bod
experience at first handsy
escalating intimacy
Poetry

“dep sesh,” “sadhu,” and “Missus Oxygen Kisses Mister Dynamite’s Heart”

loci of suffering’s
my measly attempt
to lower stress level

a crying need warns
me off phantasmagoric
pathologist’s post-mortem
Poetry
Issue 69, January 2023
Issues Archive

Ukraine, War Resistance, Hopes for Peace, Human Rights

Stretched over 4.2 square miles, the Azovstal steel complex
is/ was a sprawling warren of rail lines, warehouses, coal furnaces, factories, chimneys
above essentially an underground city of tunnels seen as ideal for guerrilla warfare.
Poetry
Issue 63, July 2022
Issues Archive

“Up & Down Or Cutting Across Chess Boards Which Aren’t Best Metaphors, Hear Songs Of Our Earth While You Can” and “End As Beginning As…?”

Just as Technology
has shifted from
being a vertical —
organizationally
in a stack above or
below other usual
equal silos
Poetry
Issue 36, April 2020
Issues Archive

“Really Ready to Rumble?”

Made my bones playing ledgeball on the block, but during college
no taxi’d drive back into the Southside snatch-‘n-grab boarded up
storefronts below Chicago’s elevated trains. Hertz’d have none of it;
Poetry
Issue 26, June 2019
Issues Archive

“Primetime Jabberwock, Harry Didn’t Clown Around,” “Septuagenarian’s Stroller Soundtrack,” and “Clownpourri”

Let’s not get mathy Cathy or walk
away Resnais but Colonel Tibbets’
Enola Gay thunderous mushroom
fireburst above Hiroshima mon amour
41 days before I’m born instantly
zapped 79,831, perhaps somewhat
more than a third of that once
gorgeous city’s population —
it was filmed for our viewing
pleasure by a companion B-29
ironically named Necessary Evil
Poetry
Issue 22, February 2019
Issues Archive

“Yo-yo”, “Ephemera” and “Bowels of Nursery”

Yo-Yo Epic refereed over-the-moon contests were sponsored by Duncan Toys Inc outside the best local movie theater where we saw twenty-five cartoons for a quarter. Plus the raffle winner with the luckiest ticket got to bring a box of chocolates home to mother.
Poetry
Issue 12, August 2018
Issues Archive

“The Dedekind Cut”, “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization, Son Caught In The Middle” and “Laundromat 1, 2, 3…9”

Ever heard of the “Dedekind Cut?” Sarnat explains the second part as the “partitioning of philosophical arguments,” and goes on to reveal an ironic vulnerability in “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization . . . .”
Poetry
Issue 7, November 2017
Issues Archive