Joseph Fasano
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josephfasano.bsky.social
Joseph Fasano
@josephfasano.bsky.social
18K followers 290 following 1.2K posts
Writer, Teacher | helping people write and be heard | Founder, Fasano Academy, educating the whole human being
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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · Dec 3
I will never, ever get over this.
josephfasano.bsky.social
More than 3,300 years ago, an unknown Egyptian wrote a love poem: clear, pure, mysterious. This translation by Egyptologist John Foster brings it to life in a way that leaves me breathless.
Love, how I’d love to slip down to the pond, Bathe with you close by on the bank. Just for you I’d wear my new Memphis swimsuit, Made of sheer linen, fit for a queen— Come see how it looks in the water! Couldn’t I coax you to wade in with me? Let the cool creep slowly around us? Then I’d dive deep down And come up for you dripping, Let you fill your eyes With the little red fish that I’d catch. (John Foster, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2001; p. 23.)
November 21, 2025 at 11:27 PM
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An exclusive excerpt from my upcoming book, The Teacher, is live on my Substack: open.substack.com/pub/josephfa...
Joseph Fasano | Substack
Joseph Fasano's Substack is here! Subscribers get access to all exclusive material: mini-lectures, excerpts, new words, and more. Click to read Joseph Fasano, a Substack publication with hundreds of s...
open.substack.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:08 PM
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for the humanity left in us 🖤
November 20, 2025 at 10:33 PM
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Thank you to Ned Hayes and The Human Intelligence Podcast for inviting me to talk about human creativity, the future of the humanities, and my new book, The Teacher. You can watch the full episode at the link below.
November 20, 2025 at 5:46 PM
josephfasano.bsky.social
Today Only:

You can get 3 of my video courses for a total of $20:

-Intro to Poetic Craft
-Hamlet & the Modern Mind
-Rilke & Eliot

-plus my workshop on Contemplative Practice & "Healing the Wounded Soul"

That's 8 hours of learning for $20

email me at [email protected]
November 19, 2025 at 5:35 PM
josephfasano.bsky.social
I hope this reaches you.
November 18, 2025 at 3:11 PM
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🕯️
Why Open? Because what is a blossom anyway but a fist saying I can't do this anymore —Joseph Fasano
November 18, 2025 at 2:38 PM
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🖤🖤🖤
November 18, 2025 at 2:52 AM
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In case you need to hear these words...
Sudden Hymn in Winter What if, after years of trial, a love should come and lay a hand upon you and say, this late, your life is not a crime —Joseph Fasano
November 13, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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Stay 🕯️
Stay So you've woken in your hospital gown in the shadows. So you're clutching the get-wells in your desperate hands, your heart like crushed doves in your bedclothes. So the body finds its new ways to be torn. But didn't it sing once? Didn't you have a little hymn for winter? Say it. Already you know the answer: What if, just once, you truly listened— to the reaching leaves, to the stranger's breath in the next bed. You hear it? You hear what the body is saying? Remember even breathing is a song. Remember even breathing is a song. —Joseph Fasano
November 13, 2025 at 1:48 PM
josephfasano.bsky.social
One of the cruelest things about mental illness is that it can isolate very loving, empathetic people from the most intimate relationships. I wrote this poem when I was in a psych ward, thinking about others—known and unknown—who have carried life this way. 🖤
Written on Van Gogh's Wall I was here. I will walk out through the deep leaves of October and kneel there with the cold foal of my shadow and try to send it off into the river. I will leave my grief like long and polished oars. Listen. I did feel joy. Then razed it. And you, my friend, you who find these small words to erase them, you who wear the gold ring of a new life, pause here and look up through casement, the barest branches singing into winter. If I could choose between a great work and a great love I would choose what is hardest for my impossible heart. I know. I know what I will say at the terrible end: The sadness, the hell will last forever. This is hell, this is what hell is: to be born so wild for love with a beast in you that keeps it from your door. —Joseph Fasano
November 12, 2025 at 9:14 PM
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I hope this reaches you, if you need it. 🕯️
Judas Thirty years I've wandered lost in madness. Now I stand alone beneath these branches and knot the rope and loosen it and knot again. I tell you you could forgive yourself and start again. You could open. You could find, just once, the way. You can't betray your one true life forever. I know. I know that you are broken. But do not be like me, my little children, and stand there at the end, in all your wreckage, and see that what you've done is what they'll tell of, that the fear to live your one life was your one life, and your greatest, your greatest, most mistaken day was your vastest chance, your vastest chance to waken. Fall out of love with your pain. —Joseph Fasano
November 12, 2025 at 4:19 PM
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Today I'm thinking of all veterans, all who carry seen and unseen scars. I can still hear the voice of my grandfather, Nicholas Fasano, who fought against tyranny at the Battle of the Bulge. And I can hear what he said, silently, with his acts. With his hands. With his life.
November 11, 2025 at 3:47 PM
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🖤
November 9, 2025 at 1:45 PM
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Last chance to register ❤️
josephfasano.bsky.social Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 19d
Sunday! Email for more info: [email protected].
November 9, 2025 at 2:21 AM
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Come create with us this Sunday. 🕯️
josephfasano.bsky.social Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 19d
Sunday! Email for more info: [email protected].
November 7, 2025 at 3:11 PM
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for you, friends 🤍
The Song of Songs This is how it is: we live again. We rise up from the death-bed in our wreckage and we walk again and we open every window, and we live again, though living is the cost.   Yes, my friends, I have a thing to tell you:   My story is your story, on this wild earth:   I loved once, I was broken, and I rose again—   and although I closed my arms around my body, although I said that darkened harp was ruined, the nights have filled my life with brutal music that has taught me that we're only here to listen, to hold each other awhile and to listen,   and to carry each other with the song of songs inside us that is wiser, and is greater than our changes, and that sings the way most wholly when we're lost. —Joseph Fasano
November 5, 2025 at 10:30 PM
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🖤🖤🖤
In the Dark I Heard The Lost Children Saying, Tell us, what do the living do? Do you dance? Do you make bread with each other? Do you walk in the parks in autumn, smelling the late summer flowers? Is it true that some things get to grow old? What is the world doing now? Are you fighting with sticks and stones? Do you remember us? Do you lie down under the stars and listen to the birds passing overhead, and do you get to feel the little wings of your own wild heart be opened? You have somewhere to go then, don't you? Go. Don't let us keep you. We are ash. We are stone. We are schoolrooms. We are hiding in our favorite little places, waiting for you to tap us on the shoulders, to tell us it was just a joke, come home now, and the guns and boots are just a game we're playing, the bread and milk are waiting on the table, and the moon is new, and the gardens are in blossom. This sentence is the length of one of our shoes.
November 5, 2025 at 7:36 PM
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Sunday! Email for more info: [email protected].
November 5, 2025 at 7:01 PM
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for all the healers
November 4, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Joseph Fasano
adammeridan.bsky.social
When Joseph Fasano wrote "love is for the ones who love the work" and I cried and I cried and I cried... so true bestie...
October 29, 2025 at 9:41 PM
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I'm not sure why I don't tell many people that I have an album of original songs. Here it is: open.spotify.com/album/0acSvE...
The Wind That Knows the Way
open.spotify.com
November 3, 2025 at 7:01 PM
josephfasano.bsky.social
I've found the best way to work through dark times is to gather together as a community and help each other create. On November 9, at 1 PM Eastern, I'll be hosting a webinar/workshop to do exactly that. To get the link, just email me at [email protected]. 🕯️
October 30, 2025 at 3:31 PM
josephfasano.bsky.social
This is for everyone who needs it. 🖤
How to Survive Love the small things of the earth. 
The dust. The dark rain in the lemon trees.
The sound of moonflowers opening 
at evening. Love them 
even when the sky is burning, 
even when a mother crouches with her child
in a dark room, wetting his lips 
with a small glass of water. Love them 
quietly, quietly but ferociously, 
their hearts in them like flocks 
the wind has furled. 

And then, in the spring, if the world 
has survived, walk out 
with your gift that you have practiced, 
your fresh gift that has ripened in secret;
lie down in the long, soft grass of summer
and wait for love, wait for it 
to find you— 
and when it lays its hand at last 
upon your shoulder, open 
to all that is about to happen; 
rise up and walk off into the lemon trees 
and live awhile, live awhile 
with someone—their eyes, their scent, their curls—
 and when love departs, when love 
is done and fallen, stand there 
in the coming winds of autumn 
and turn back to the small things 
that have been with you— 
buttons, apples, chapters— 
and then, because you've practiced this
forever, because you are ready now 
for the hardest task of all of them, 

lay your hand on the changed face in the mirror
and look at it— 
its wounds, its crimes, its changes— 
and tell yourself what you see
deserves your mercy—that face, that name, that stranger—
and place your palms on that one life in the mirror
and open to the whole of it, the whole of it, 
and love it like the last chance of the world. —Joseph Fasano
October 30, 2025 at 2:35 AM
josephfasano.bsky.social
It was wonderful to teach a poetry workshop at Harvard this weekend. Thanks to the Harvard Undergraduate Creative Writing Collective for inviting me. When I hear all these new voices, I know the future of literature is bright.
October 28, 2025 at 1:55 AM