As poets we write about topics that matter to us. These topics might be anything: race horses, the nature of the divine, our lover's hands, caterpillars, environmental degradation, or jazz trombone. And then there's always that one huge, delicate, and potentially difficult topic: family. How honest can we […]
It’s so important to do your homework before sending your manuscript to a publisher. Make sure to take notes for each publisher you research. You will most likely want to compare them to each other before deciding where you want to submit. Make sure the press is the […]
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, […]
Every community has its taboos, and the literary world is no different. Dirty words like flowery, pretentious, or derivative get bounced around to describe work, but few accusations strike blows at the hearts of the seriously bookish more so than being called a confessional writer. Telling a new […]
Every community has its taboos, and the literary world is no different. Dirty words like flowery, pretentious, or derivative get bounced around to describe work, but few accusations strike blows at the hearts of the seriously bookish more so than being called a confessional writer. Telling a new […]
When I returned to teaching in October 2015 after a 14-year hiatus, not only did it seem hard to find the time to write, but it also became a challenge to find what to write. The words just were not there. I was learning to juggle motherhood with […]
Every once in a while, I put on my ears and go to a poetry open mike. I've been doing this for years. I've sipped coffee in countless cafés, fidgeted on innumerable uncomfortable chairs, and pondered art--the visual and the spoken kind--while poets belted out their work at […]
As writers we are so often told to "write what you know." And this is good advice. But this "rule" should not be taken literally, especially when creating persona poems. The poet must create a place where the reader must, as Samuel T. Coleridge famously said, "willingly suspends […]
Since the late 1970s, Linda Pastan has been writing "quiet" verse on marriage, family, parenting, and grief. While she was a senior at Radcliffe College, she won Mademoiselle's poetry prize (in case you didn't know, Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Despite that success, for the next decade, Pastan put poetry aside […]
Big thanks to Karen Craigo for publishing my article "Why you should submit to literary magazines: 5 insightful articles" on her blog earlier this week. Make sure to watch for Karen Craigo’s guest blog post here on my blog in the future! My article includes my own short list of reasons […]
