The Last Flame Last: Poetry for a Worthy Cause

Aug 27
4 min read

August 27, 2026

By Lesléa Newman

When people asked, “How could you write a book of poems about October 7th?” I answered, “How could I not?” I owed it to my grandmother who, at age ten, fled pogroms in “the Old Country” (eastern Europe) and traveled in steerage to America in search of safety and a better life. I owed it to my uncles who fought in World War II and, though they would not talk about what they saw “over there,” I knew even as a child that it was something terrible. I owed it to my father’s friend Joe, who wore long sleeves every day, even in summer, trying in vain to hide the numbers on his arm. (When the temperature rose above ninety, he reluctantly bared his arms.)

When people said, “That takes a lot of courage,” just as they did thirty-seven years ago when I wrote Heather Has Two Mommies, the first children’s book about a happy family consisting of a child and her two lesbian moms (and which became the ninth most banned book of the 1990s), I replied, “I don’t feel very brave.” And then I looked up at the Georgia O’Keeffe quote hanging over my desk, which says, “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do,” and picked up my pen.

Not that I wanted to write a book of poems about October 7th, mind you. What I wanted was to live in a world where such poems wouldn’t be necessary because October 7th would never have happened. But we do not live in that world quite yet.

October 7th knocked me to the ground. Not knowing what else to do, I turned to my usual coping method: writing. I have a bookmark with a quote on it by the renowned musician Pablo Casals that says, “My cello is my oldest friend, my dearest friend.” That’s how I feel about my pen. It has gotten me through many tough times: a traumatic move during my childhood, the deaths of my beloved grandmother and both my parents, the murder of Matthew Shepard, 9/11, and so much more. My pen has stayed faithfully by my side for more than sixty years. And who better to turn to in times of crisis than an old, dear friend?

When I am wrestling with unwieldly emotions, I often turn to poetry, and more specifically, formal poetry. I find it helpful to have a container to pour my feelings into. And so I wrote “October 7th Sestina,” which is one long howl of grief for all the lives that were destroyed on that terrible day. A sestina consists of six sestets (six-line stanzas) in which the end words of each line are repeated in a prescribed pattern. The poem ends with a tercet (three-line stanza) in which each line contains two of the end words.

October 7th Sestina

I weep

I scream

I hope

I wail

I rail

I pray

I weep

I rail

I scream

I wail

I hope

I pray

I wail

I weep

I scream

I rail

I hope

I scream

I pray

I weep

I wail

I rail

I weep

I hope

I pray

I scream

I wail

I pray

I rail

I hope

I weep

Weeping, screaming

hoping, wailing,

railing, praying, I grieve

After I finished writing “October 7th Sestina,” other poems followed and helped me move through the coming days of mourning the dead, praying for the hostages, and taming my own fears and anxiety. And later still, writing poems helped me deal with the antisemitism that exploded all over the world and unfortunately continues to this day. A poem about a ninety-year-old man whose mezuzah was snatched off his neck, a poem about a statue of Moses in a public park being defaced, a poem about a group of Jews in Boulder, Colorado, set on fire . . . unfortunately the world supplies an endless amount of material for writing such poems. And it is the poet’s job to bear witness to it all.

Whenever I publish a new volume of poetry, my hope is that the book, in addition to doing well, does good. When I published my novel-in-verse, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, which explores the homophobic hate crime that ended Matthew Shepard’s life, I donated a portion of my royalties to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. When I published I Carry My Mother, a memoir-in-verse about the end of my mother’s life, I donated a portion of my royalties to the American Cancer Society. And when I wrote I Wish My Father, a memoir-in-verse about my father’s death, I donated a portion of my royalties to the American Diabetes Association. Poetry teaches empathy and so it makes perfect sense to me that poetry and compassion would go hand in hand.

To that end, I will be donating a portion of my royalties from The Last Flame Last to Beth Israel Congregation of Jackson, Mississippi, which was heavily damaged by a January 2026 arson attack, to help them rebuild both their temple and their belief in the kindness of strangers. It is my way of performing Tikkun Olam, the Jewish tradition of repairing the world. Though no one can repair the world on their own, we are each responsible for doing our part.

The Last Flame Last is available for pre-order from now until September 25from Finishing Line Press. Pre-orders are important because they determine the print run and author’s royalty rate, which will determine how much money I can donate to Beth Israel Congregation.

An earlier version of this essay first appeared as a guest blog post on The Book of Life.

Lesléa Newman has created ninety books for readers of all ages, including most recently the poetry collection The Last Flame Last and the children’s books Something Sweet: A Sitting Shiva Story and Rainbow Cookies. She has received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two National Jewish Book Awards, two American Library Association Stonewall Honors, and the Massachusetts Book Award.