I am writing by hand now every day. Have been since the middle of August, my mad money spent on postcard stamps. Pick up the pen, find the message that goes on the card I am scrawling for a voter in a state that is not this one, and get to work
…
Out the Window, Wednesday
Out the window, Wednesday, there’s still life, flora and fauna, chittering nut hatches, bleating red-tailed squirrels. One of my cats sits at the base of a Doug fir, waiting, hoping, but the odds are against him, just like they are against me, too, in spite of all my pretending that I’ll figure it out, find the answer, we end up the same, dead in the end…
…
(Re)Publication News: “Six Degrees”
I have taken many trains across these United States. Many of them have romantic-sounding names—the Coast Starlight, the Empire Builder, the Capitol Limited, the California Zephyr, and the Texas Eagle are the names of a few
…
Writing in Form: A Narrative Poem in Syllabics
My narrative poem in syllabics, “Old, New, Broken, Blue,” was published in the Traditional Form issue of Blast Furnace, Volume 2, No. 2 in Spring of 2012. The pattern is this: Each stanza has lines bearing five syllables followed by a final line of two beats…
The Individuality of a Poetry Signature
Is it, perhaps, the most famous cursive signature in American history? And, now that I think about it—and given all the other handwritten flourishes that graces the documents created by the so-called founding fathers—why was John Hancock the one who had his moniker celebrated above and beyond all the rest? The history books offer something of an explanation but who knows if it is even true
…
Published Online after Being in Print: “And I will tell you a story”
The opening poem in my poetry collection, Every Door Recklessly Ajar—“And I Will Tell You a Story”—was recently re-published online in Fall 2024 at Poemeleon: A Literary Journal. It previously appeared in print in the journal, Gold Man Review, out of Salem Oregon.
Oregon Poetry Association Honorable Mention for a Prose Poem
My yet-unpublished prose poem, “Thresholds of More Oblivious Blossoming,” has received the First Honorable Mention in the Form/Prose Poem Category of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2024 Contest. The category judge, Rana Tahir, wrote…
Playing with Form: The Abecedarian
In Summer 2018, riverbabble published my poem, “First Line of Defense: A Cento.” Not only does this poem use the cento form, stitching together lines borrowed from other poets into a poem all its own, but it is also an (almost) abecedarian. An abecedarian is a poem in which the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet…
…
Publication News: “Remembering Gravity”
Here is another one of my old chestnuts I Publication News: “Remembering Gravity”
Here is another one of my old chestnuts, as I call them—ditties I wrote when I was just taking up the pen and paper again almost twenty years ago and trying to re-learn what makes a good poem. Looking at these oldies but goodies again now, in 2024, I can see I would write them very differently now!
…
When the art monster turns out to be someone beloved…
Sometimes the secrets we keep in life we are able to quietly take to the grave. Other times there are secrets—perhaps buried, elided, squelched, ignored, dismissed, and discounted for decades—bubble back up to the surface, break through, causing a seismic wave especially when the secret-keeper is both beloved and well-known
…
