Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Book Report”
Two of my poems, “On Not Looking Away: A Cento” and “At Harriet Tubman’s Grave in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York,” have been accepted for publication in the Winter 2024 print edition of Fence. Per their website, “Fence is committed to publishing from the outside and the inside of established communities of writing, seeking always to interrogate, collaborate with, and bedevil all the systems that bring new writing to light.” You can read about their history here…
There are numerous ways to bring the art of the voice into poetry. We speak. We converse. We inhabit personas and personalities. We wail. We squawk. We squeal. We complain. We rant, rave, and react. We sound off with authority and verve. We simply and merely utter. And this is all the part of the notion of poetic voice. And in all of these varied utterances, we instinctively inhabit multiple registers of diction—high, middle, and low according to the late poet Tony Hoagland (with Kay Cosgrove) in his short, sweet, and very smart book of essays, The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice…
It seems fitting to post this nod to an excellent primer about tyranny today, February 29, 2024, after the clearly compromised majority of our current Supreme Court decided yesterday to hear a treasonous criminal’s plea for immunity from any and all crimes committed when he was the (accidental) President of the United States…
I recently read Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World by Pádraig Ó. Tuama, the host of the podcast of the same name. Tuama introduces each poem, then offers his thoughts on both the art and craft of what the poem and the poet is attempting to do in that particular poem and why. He offers insights on each poem’s use a particular form as well as metaphor, rhythm and repetition, recognizable patterns, and poetic devices.
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…
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…
The maple leaves were already falling in our backyard habitat when I decided it was time to read another big biography. This one is W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868—1919 by David Levering Lewis. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1994. And actually this volume is only Part 1 of this bio; Part 2 (another chubby tome) also won the Pulitzer Prize…
When you are someone who writes or aspires to write, I think reading means not just enjoyment but also study. It means seeking to understand all the nuts and bolts about the way a piece of writing is put together and then ticks…
The city of ideas remains alive and well and living between the covers of many a book. I seek out volumes that teach me things, that remind me of the necessity of history and creativity and having an open and curious mind. I like to read stories of lives
What joy to be able to praise a great poetry book written by a dear friend! David Pickering’s debut collection, Jesus Comes to Me as Judy Garland, won the 2020 Airlie Prize and was published by Airlie Press in September 2021. I was touched and honored when he asked me to write a blurb for it….
