Sometimes you hit the poetry acceptance jackpot. Curio Poetry took not one but three of my poems for publication in their second issue in January 2012: “Voyeur”; “Fifteen-Minute Family”; and “The Time of Small Despair.” And while these poems seems to be about different subjects…
Say/Mean…Shaking the Pumpkin
Years ago, in a poetry class at the Attic Writers’ Workshop here in Portland, our teacher, Paulann Petersen, turned us on to a really cool book edited by Jerome Rothenberg, Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North America
…
Playing with Form: Erasure vs. Found Poetry
Several years ago, during the nadir of our accidentally-elected political clown show and just before the pandemic, I found I only wanted to read history and biography. I was trying to understand how we got ourselves in the mess we were clearly in
…
Metaphor for This Past Ice-Bound Week?
An heirloom narcissus that, strangely, insisted on blooming starting back in December and is now slayed and then some by our recent ice-ocalypse. Which still refuses to thaw as temperatures hover (barely) above 32 degrees Fahrenheit…
Publication News: Napalm Health Spa
My poem, “Tong-len Forgotten” was published once upon a time, long long ago, in the June online issue of Napalm Health Spa: Report 2007. According to The Buddhist Dictionary, tong-len is “a practice in Tibetan Buddhism of meditatively ‘sending’ (btang) one’s good fortune and happiness out to others and ‘receiving’ (len) any misfortune and negativity others may be experiencing.” We were on a trip to the lovely Québec City when I bore witness to the scene that later found its way into this poem…
Playing with Form: Persona Poetry
My persona poem, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton Chews Out Her Daughter, Margaret, Who Has Decided Not to Follow in Her Mother’s Footsteps,” was published in the all-women contributors issue of the Medulla Review back in 2012
…
Podcast Review: Legend, The Joni Mitchell Story
How do you survive an Arctic snow and ice and blowing wind and wind chill event in the normally benign climate of the Pacific Northwest? By listening to the new, awesome podcast, Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story on BBC 4 radio who has done it once it again in the realm of musical explorations. I absolutely adore their series…
Coloring the Days
I have begun the annual winter rainy season task of cleaning stuff out. The file drawers are mostly done so now I am on to folders of this-and-that saved over the years for what reason? So I could use what I had stashed in writing of my own? Something I stumbled on that was written nearly twenty years ago: a four-part essay series called “Things to Come” by Michael Ventura…
Acceptance News: The Poeming Pigeon
My poem, “Lamentation: A Cento,” has been accepted for publication in the fourteenth issue of The Poeming Pigeon in Fall 2024. This is one of forty-seven centos that make up my unpublished book manuscript, I Am Speechless: A Book of Centos. It is also included in my manuscript, Brief Campaigns of Sting and Sweet, currently making the rounds of assorted poetry book contests…
New Year and the Undoing
End of the holiday season so swiftly upon us. Ornaments wrapped, stored in the growing inventory of empty Garrett’s popcorn cans. Glass icicles removed, laid to rest in a metal, candy-caned tin tied with a sateen bow. Strings of red beads, garland, back in their indigo blue box. Light strings unclipped and tied with twine until needed again next year…