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 […]
The first issue of Sticks & Stones, my bi-monthly newsletter, will be delivered to subscribers on Monday, January 1, 2018. Issue 1 features a review of Jenene Ravesloot’s poetry collection, titled Sliders, a random poem from the bookshelf, notes from the reading life, and a pithy quote or […]
I’m thrilled to share this moving review of Night Court, just up at The Pedestal. My thanks to reviewer David E. Poston. Night Court is available from Glass Lyre Press and Amazon.
I’m oddly inspired by parking lots. As I wrote in my book Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets, “Although I’ve written many nature-based poems, I find inspiration in ordinary stretches of asphalt.” Quite a few of my poems began in parking lots – “This is a Wild […]
I was an impatient child. I wanted everything, all the time, right now. Each year before Christmas, my impatience flared into full-blown anxiety, complete with stomach cramps, shallow breathing, and sleepless nights. Once I overheard my mother telling my father, “Christmas is too hard for Erica.” The anticipation […]
In the December 3, 2017 issue of the New York Times Book Review, I read these words from David Orr’s “On Poetry” column: “Poetry, as everyone knows, is unpopular.” The first sentence in an article about children’s poetry, Orr goes on to state that poetry is so unpopular […]
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