Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Writing”
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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White-gray afternoon, waning days of December, heading toward the end of 2023. Light rain for the next hour, tapering off to a slight drizzle. Every now and then, the wind stirs and the branches of the Japanese maple as well as the slowly bronzing leaves of snow-leaf hydrangea in our front yard garden have their turns at being riled up. At Leadbetter State Park, hiking on Tuesday…
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I started to work on what’s below way back in the Stone Age, 2007. Some writing exercise that I just did without my usual scrutiny and questioning. I stumbled on it a year later on a Saturday morning while sipping coffee as we readied to start another outside gardening day. Looking at it again today, dateline December 2023, …
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…
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. When the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten
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A number of years ago—maybe eight or nine now! 2014?—I entertained myself greatly with a poetry book project I called Miss Scarlet in the Library with a Rope, a celebration of the wonder that is the book. This collection grew to become a gathering of poems whose predominant constraint is that they were all “prompted” by book titles from prose authors I had loved and read voraciously over the years
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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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Several years back, in the pre-pandemic Before Times, I had the good fortune to work with Dana Levin, a talented poet and extraordinary teacher, during several July sessions I attended at the Port Townsend Writers Conference…
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…
A beloved friend left this world today. She had been in hospice for about six months. I am grateful I was able to visit with her back in May. Another friend and I went to her home near the Finger Lakes National Forest in Burdett, New York and spent an afternoon telling stories, laughing, and reminiscing. It was an afternoon of grace
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