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
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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
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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 This is one of forty-seven centos that make up my unpublished book manuscript, I Am Speechless: A Book of Centos.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…
Backstory about My Poem, “Ernestine”
In the summer of 2022, I started to read Heather Clark’s acclaimed new biography, Red Comet: The Short and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Seven pages into the first chapter entitled “The Beekeeper’s Daughter,” we learn that not only is there a multi-generational history of mental illness in Plath’s family but, unknown to her, her paternal grandmother, Ernestine, was committed to the Salem asylum by her husband, Theodore, in October 1916…
Publication News: “Present Tense Love Poem”
Over the years, a number of my poems were featured at riverbabble, a literary journal that unfortunately is no longer online. riverbabble was founded in Berkeley, California in 2002 by Pandemonium Press and published twice a year—once in June, the Bloom’s Day Issue, and once in January, the Winter Solstice…
Issue No. 4 kerning | a space for words now out!
My poem, “Ernestine” is included in these fine pages. I wrote this poem for the late Sylvia Plath after I went to visit a memorial in Salem, Oregon in early 2023. The cremains of Ernestine Kottke Plath, Sylvia Plath’s grandmother, were in a canister marked #177 (out of a total of 3423) at the Oregon State Hospital from her death in 1919…
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Publication News: “The Cat Lady”
My poem, “The Cat Lady” was published in Stirring in January 2012. My beloved, half-Siamese creatures—Balthazar, Ping, and Ryman have long traveled over the rainbow bridge…
Published but Uncollected…
I have a good number of poems that were published online or in print and then never found their way for some reason or another into my various poetry book collections. Here is one I have always liked because it speaks to the strangeness of growing up where I did—the anthracite coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania
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Publication News: Fragments in qaartsiluni
Qarrtsiluni published my poem, “I started near the far north. Ran.” in their Fragments issue back in 2012. Their call for submissions requested “in the wild” creations more than overly crafted pieces so that’s what I sent in!
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