Poet, Writer, Instructor
Numbered tiles If you’re a writer, artist, musician or other creative, how do you get noticed? Is it enough to be good? How will people find you? One way that’s become popular in the age of the Internet is to send out bits and pieces of your creative process, sharing the project as you work… Continue reading Should You Show Your Work?
I’m a dedicated freewriter. I especially like that freewriting has roots in poet Jack Kerouac’s stream of consciousness, “spontaneous prose,” the Surrealist Movement’s “automatic writing,” and in Yeat’s “trance-writing.” (Check out this videopoem by Helena Postigo, “I Think of Dean Moriarity.”) My first introduction to freewriting was in a college English class in 1980. At first, I simply hated it. I… Continue reading Generating New Poems from Freewrites
Ekphrasis: (meaning "description" in Greek; expanded to mean "the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device.") Merriam-Webster: a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art I published my first ekphrastic poems in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Ekphrasis, edited by Laverne Frith and Carol Frith.… Continue reading Words with Pictures: Ekphrasis
Plenty, it seems. Ask any writer who’s been at the craft for awhile what inspires her and you might get this pithy answer: everything. Or nothing—“I don’t need inspiration,” says the truly advanced writer. “I can write a poem, or a story, or an essay, just by staring at the wall.” I tell my students a version… Continue reading What’s Wrong with Inspiration?
I recently received an exquisite little treasure: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Poets & Writers Spill Their Worst Reading Experiences, edited by Richard Peabody of Gargoyle Magazine and Paycock Press. This charming book of flops and failures gladdened my heart, from its laugh-out-loud moments—i.e., Dinty W. Moore’s very first reading in a bookstore filled with “gently used… Continue reading My Worst Poetry Reading
Al Young at the Petaluma Poetry Walk, September 2016. Photo by Erica Goss “For her graphic imagination and her instinct for matching feeling to image, I chose Erica Goss’s poems. It is far easier to describe in language the push-pull and shove of emotional attraction than it is to locate and pinpoint the meaning of… Continue reading A Tribute to Al Young
I was twenty-six years old when I first read Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez’s National Book Award-winning account of the five years he spent visiting the Arctic region. It was a difficult read for me. I tried to care about a land that seemed not only distant, but harsh and unlovable in the extreme. Why would anyone,… Continue reading Barry Lopez: An Appreciation
My life revolves around lists. As soon as I arrive at my desk in the morning, I check the list I made at the beginning of the week. If it’s Friday, I hope to see a bunch of completed tasks which I’ve been able to check off: “prep for tutoring,” “write review,” “what the heck’s… Continue reading The Power of the List
This morning I dumped the chopped-up core from my breakfast apple into a yellow plastic bowl, added some leftover rice I found lurking at the back of the fridge, and then poured the extra steamed milk from the cappuccinos my husband made over it. After I mixed it all together, I put on the puffy… Continue reading I’m a SAP: A Seasonally Affected Poet
I’m trying not to be too hard on myself—as I revisit my New Year’s Resolutions for 2020, I’m saddened by how few items on the list I completed. Of course, no one could have predicted the chaos and uproar the Coronavirus pandemic brought with it. With that in mind, I’m addressing each item on the… Continue reading Review of my 2020 New Year’s Resolutions