I Cried Through Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds and Without by Donald Hall My manuscript had been accepted by a publisher when a friend advised me to read Stag's Leap. Here was a Pulitzer-winning book on the same subject--husband of 30+ years falls in love with other woman. […]
I Cried Through Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds and Without by Donald Hall My manuscript had been accepted by a publisher when a friend advised me to read Stag's Leap. Here was a Pulitzer-winning book on the same subject--husband of 30+ years falls in love with other woman. […]
Spring wind from the northern Oregon coast seems to still enliven my hair days after returning from a weekend of poetry workshops. I feel its thrill as I look at the poems I wrote, re-explore the workshop focus on metaphor and first lines - and realize how many […]
Every poet has, at some time, experienced those woeful lulls in writing; those days or months or sometimes even years when life seems to offer little poetic inspiration. When we're so stuck in the banal routine of daily life: driving kids to and from school, making dinner, doing […]
Poetry has always been a part of me. Not necessarily always in its purest sense, but verses of organized thought run through my head without pause during all my waking hours. They have done so since I can remember. Most of the time, this poetry inside my head […]
I was placed in a cold, brightly lit room, six months pregnant, although at the time you could barely tell. Due to the extreme stress I had been under, I had actually lost weight throughout this pregnancy. Nearing the end, this was becoming worrisome. Wearing the same clothes […]
If you're angsty. Because you want details, not narrative. Because you want to sound smarter than you are. Because you want to, no one can make you. You're Charles Dickens. These are some of the answers my high school students offered me when I asked why they think […]
In developing a new haiku style of poetry, I had to come up with a name. During my investigations into the history of haiku (l) I came across two Japanese words that I have chosen to describe this new style; Shashin, meaning photograph and Kaku, meaning picture (to […]
In developing a new haiku style of poetry, I had to come up with a name. During my investigations into the history of haiku (l) I came across two Japanese words that I have chosen to describe this new style; Shashin, meaning photograph and Kaku, meaning picture (to […]
I was the only first-grader to use plunge in my response to Ms. Hill-Rounds' prompt: Write a story about a time you learned how to do something. I could swim almost as soon as I could walk – my dad says I should have been born a fish […]
