Erica Goss is a poet, writer and instructor. She served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA, from 2013-2016.
I found this list in a 2003 letter from my father. At the time, I was beginning my MFA degree in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. My father was worried that I would succumb to the “tricks of rhetoric, which are the opposite of poetry.” In […]
I’ve come to realize something about the reviewing process. Every book I review is unique, and therefore, dictates the type of review it receives. I call this style of reviewing The Exploratory Review, which combines elements of narrative, description, and exposition. In the exploratory review, the book leads […]
Recently, I came across an article titled “An Anatomy of the Long Poem”. The author, Rachel Zucker, states “there are many short poems I admire and, of course, too many wonderful mid-length poems to name that I adore. But I have a special love for a good long […]
My first encounter with Terrance Hayes’s poem “The Blue Terrance” occurred in my car. It was the spring of 2009 and I’d been listening to a CD of an episode of “The Playlist,” the Poetry Foundation’s podcast, on my way from one teaching job to another. The drive […]
Definition: An abecedarian poem is one in which verses or words begin with the successive letters of the alphabet. I recently wrote my first abecedarian poem, and while I enjoyed the process, I nearly stalled out when I got to the letter X. Hardly any useful words begin […]
In this post, I share my method for reviewing books of poetry. My reviews appear once a month in my newsletter, Sticks & Stones, which is free to subscribers. I read the whole book several times. First, I read it as if I were not planning to review […]
Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit I’ve read a lot of creativity books, but none quite like The Creative Habit, Learn It and Use It For Life. The author, Twyla Tharp, is a daring and innovative choreographer. Her bio states that she “has choreographed more than one hundred sixty […]
This is a very useful follow-up to my post of 1/24/18 on researching journals, submitting one’s work, rejection, and becoming a better writer. Trish Hopkinson Navigating the world of literary magazines was difficult for me in the beginning. I initially set out to publish anywhere, so desperate for […]
But what am I writing? At a reading I gave last week, an audience member asked me if I wrote every day. “Yes,” I said. “I write every single day, even on weekends.” The next day, I started to wonder if I’d given a totally honest answer. The […]
Last Friday, as I spent several hours getting batches of poems ready for submission, I started thinking about the word “submit.” Meanings include “give in,” “yield,” “defer,” “succumb,” and “surrender.” If you’re a writer hoping to publish work in journals and magazines, these words aren’t likely to inspire […]
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Erica Goss 