I spent the past week reading over 200 pages of poetry from all of Larry Levis’s volumes over the years. In 1996, Levis died of …
Marathon (Wo)man
I have spent an entire day, more or less, revising a single freaking poem. Okay, in my defense, it is one made up of multiple parts, one that attempts to tell a story, a narrative, in the persona of people in my coal mining hometown. In addition, I’ve had the gremlins that I am certain live inside the bowels of Microsoft Word erase styles, italics, epigraph fonts, etc. more than once this day of typing too many words. So more labor-intensive time sink there as well
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Read, Revise, Read, Repeat
Take a measly little pone of a poem written, oh, seven or eight months back. One that’s been sitting, gathering moss, and that you’re certain is nothing not something. When you wake up, fresh, read it over again, and maybe again.
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Back at the Keyboard?
It's been a while. I was roaming around the world, a Tour de France of sorts by car with detours into the Haut-Pyrenees and …
Back from Poetry Camp
I am just back from a week at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference at Fort Worden, a Washington State Park and yes, where they filmed parts of An Officer and a Gentleman way back when…
Started in 1974—and attended by many writing rock stars, beginners who became writing rock stars, and humble beginners—…
Nom de Plume?
Write out your full name. Research the meaning of your name (which can include any or all of the following: your nickname, first name, middle name, surname, and/or mother’s maiden name if you use it).
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Poetry and the Sound of the Pacific Ocean
I am in Newport, Oregon for the Northwest Poets’ Concord this weekend, a veritable grassroots gathering of the poetic tribes, many who, like me, are not affiliated with academia. …
And so after a month of daily scribbling…
Since last fall, maybe early November, I’ve been drafting (mostly) a poem a day with time off for Thanksgiving…Every day in the short month of February, I posted my thoughts about the process, as well as excerpts from the daily poems, one-a-day like a creative vitamin…
One More Cost of Doing Business?
The corner of Pennsylvania I hail from is no stranger to natural and man-made disasters. Its primary industry, anthracite coal mining, is one of the most dangerous on earth. Men descend, work the slope, the drift, the face …
Here We Are in the Years…
A dear, dear friend from my long ago past life was found this week. What a gift that is! I, who pride myself on not losing touch with those I hold so near and dear lost this person, how, I don’t even recall. But now he’s found, thanks to a mutual pal who braved the vagaries of Facebook to connect with him. And already, after a mere 24 hours of e-mail back-and-forth, man oh man, there are some people you just pick up with where you left off…
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