In 2017, I decided to start a newsletter. I named it Sticks & Stones after the childhood chant “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Of course, words can and do hurt, and are far more powerful than mere sticks and stones, but […]
Memoir workshops are ideal for introducing the beautiful art of poetry writing. Many of my students have not yet experienced the joys of writing free verse. This blog post illustrates how I teach this workshop. Free verse is not just another vehicle to tell your story. It’s so […]
Not everyone in modern times truly appreciates poetry. It's often linked to old sonnets and pretty love rhymes. But as a poet, you know there's much more to it than meets the eye. Just like short stories, novellas, and books, poetry has different genres, styles, and rules. Marketing […]
Poets and writers are creative. On paper, we concoct characters and emotions. We invent forms and structure. We imagine people and places. We use the latest technology to research our work and appeal to readers. We write, edit and revise so no verse or phrase or word is […]
1. That movement in the brush, the chance reflection in a pane of glass, that blue comb you found on a gravel path, the person your peripheral vision almost caught--these are the spermatozoa of poems. All they lack are the reactions of the egg in the womb of […]
I don't know what it was about The Bell Jar that made me want to write about it but from the second I put the book down I knew there had to be more to Sylvia Plath and her character, Esther Greenwood's, story. When I learned that Plath […]
I don't know what it was about The Bell Jar that made me want to write about it but from the second I put the book down I knew there had to be more to Sylvia Plath and her character, Esther Greenwood's, story. When I learned that Plath […]
Excerpts from Prartho Sereno's book-in-progress, Tending the Roots in a STEM-Crazed World: Gleanings from a Curriculum in Wonder If' a child loses her natural friendship with the world of animals and trees, her sense of belonging to the realms of weather and the moon and stars' how will […]
“What is your process when writing a found poem?" editor Jessica Purgett asked me recently, in an interview. Good question! And one I hadn't considered before–it had seemed like a simple thing. But the more I thought about it, the more complicated and interesting that question was. My […]
1. I come to reviewing as a reader, a simple lover of books. For many years, I believed that loving a book was not reason enough to review it. I believed that one needed special degrees in judgement in order to be able to speak of books with […]
