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 […]
If you have a resume like mine – degrees in data processing and poetry, early jobs selling candy, shoes, and houseplants, a career in IT (when it was still called “MIS”) and a mid-life shift back to the arts, you might find it challenging to explain how these […]
I have a little game I play in bookstores. First I find the poetry section. Then I run my eyes along the shelf, head cocked to the right so I can read the books’ skinny spines. I’m looking for book I’ve never read by an author I’ve never […]
The first issue of Sticks & Stones went out to subscribers on January 1. It features my very first book review of the year: Jenene Ravesloot’s Sliders. If you’d like to subscribe to Sticks & Stones, send an email to ericagoss@comcast.net with the subject “Newsletter.” A few years […]
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