A fellow poet recently had the courage to complain about the expense of our chosen vocation. It's a sad fact that the net proceeds for poets are usually negative. We often have to pay to develop our craft and get ourselves read. Perhaps it's not unlike many art forms in this […]
I do NOT pay to publish. When I'm approaching a journal for possible submission, I first check the guidelines for a reading fee and whether they expressly prohibit formal verse (more on this shortly). If no fee and no such proscription, I go to the archives for the […]
To elide is to drop a consonant in pronunciation. Elision also has a second meaning: the process of joining together or merging things, especially abstract ideas. That definition could as easily apply to sculpture as to poetry. To composing as to screenwriting. It’s no surprise that the […]
Onward and upward. I don't recall all of the Longfellow poem, “Excelsior” but I do know it deals with a young man, who in face of bad weather continues onward and upward into the Alps with a flag emblazoned with the word, “Excelsior!” The Italian Alpine society was […]
Onward and upward. I don't recall all of the Longfellow poem, “Excelsior” but I do know it deals with a young man, who in face of bad weather continues onward and upward into the Alps with a flag emblazoned with the word, “Excelsior!” The Italian Alpine society was […]
In September of 2016, I published my fifth poetry book, the winner of Moon City Press's book prize, Field Guide to the End of the World, all about surviving and navigating the world post-apocalypse. When I started writing these poems, it was way before the light-comedy apocalypse television […]
What is poetry? Galway Kinnell says, "To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment." Robert Frost writes, "Writing a poem is discovering.” Madeleine LeCense, an 18-year-old National […]
In June, my husband Dan and I were on a road trip out to California to see our son. Somewhere in the Rockies, I said to him, “You know, I think it’s time I went back to get that MFA.” When we returned home, I applied, was accepted, […]
My father hangs upside down on a pipe that separates our street from the next. All of his change falls from his pockets. I am eight years old. The kids in the neighborhood have fathers in their late twenties, and mine is in his early forties. He waves […]
Carla Drysdale's work explores difficult subjects such as childhood abuse and sexual exploitation with tight, lyrical nuance. Little Venus, Drysdale's first book of poetry, came out in 2009 from Canadian publisher Tightrope Books. As often happens when poets create a persona, Drysdale's Little Venus tells truths and makes […]
