Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Writing”
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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There was a frost last week in and around the Northeast Portland neighborhood where we live, a couple of miles up the hill from the Columbia River. But somehow the dahlias survived here in our micro-climate that only got to a low of 33 degrees F. I walked by other gardens where their dahlia leaves are now blackened, their unspent blooms still knobby and unopened on their stems…
I can’t remember how I came up with the title of this poem. Perhaps I wanted to invoke the notion in Christian theology about the conversion of the body and blood of Jesus Christ into homely bread and wine. In a poem about suicide—specifically death by hanging—why would I have dared to invoke the Eucharist at all…
Often the wisdom arrives in the simplest of packages and seems like it was there (and obvious) all along
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Getting ready all day yesterday and today for the arrival of family including young grandchildren early tomorrow. Getting ready means laundry
