Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Writing”
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…
Since last fall, maybe early November, I’ve been drafting (mostly) a poem a day with time off for Thanksgiving, a 60th birthday party, Christmas, and our recent delirious spate of February spring. I’d long meant to tackle such a project…
As the whole world likely knows, the reclusive author, J.D. Salinger, died at the age of ninety-one last week. I was royally hooked on everything written by Salinger when I was an impressionable teen. Franny and Zooey was my favorite…
One of my resolutions for 2010 is to jump-start what I’ve taken to calling my solo MFA regimen. I know I have many gaps to fill, knowledge-wise…
They’ve started to trickle in: the not-unexpected rejection letters from the dozen or so contests I entered a few months back, inevitably telling me that my poetry manuscript has not been selected for a prize or for publication
In March 2009, a dear friend chose to begin the process of dying “consciously.” What does that mean in this culture so notoriously youth-obsessed and morality-denying?…
It’s been over twenty years since Natalie Goldberg urged us to “free the writer within” in what seemed, at the time, her groundbreaking (well, in some circles) book, Writing Down the Bones, first published in 1986. Yep, Reagan was still President…
Mary Oliver is a beloved contemporary poet. Her work is read at weddings and funerals and by Garrison Keillor on his radio show, “The Writer’s Alamanac.” Even my yoga teacher in Corvallis, Oregon, often began our class with inspirational lines from Oliver’s work…
Last night, I dreamed of being on the ferry from Mukilteo to Whidbey Island in Washington. It was crowded with people, what I imagine it might feel like to travel in steerage, and the weight of all the passengers …
Trigger is not one of my favorite nouns mostly thanks to its too frequent use under sad and horrific circumstances in this gun-toting, trigger-happy country of ours. But one of my favorite books about writing is a little gem by Richard Hugo called The Triggering Town…
