Last fall I began getting letters like this from the president, the vice-president, the NRA, anti-abortion organizations. Not my typical mail. Why me? Then it came to me: in August a friend died, a Marine combat veteran, and in his honor I made a donation to the Wounded Warrior project, which must have triggered a … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by William Stafford
Last summer, driving to Vermont, I detoured past my grandparents’ dairy farm. That’s how I think of it –their farm, on McGhee Hill Road–even though it’s been almost half a century since it changed hands, bought by city dwellers who turned the barn into a house and the house into guest quarters. This time, instead … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Armen Davoudian
Once, when he was about eight, my son looked up at me and said, “Mama, what if we’re all characters in a book, and someone is writing us right now?” Once, before the scale at the Y was digital, I stepped on it ready to maneuver the sliding weights, only to find that the unknown … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Lisel Mueller
How I first found this poem is lost to me –was it in one of my grandmother’s huge and heavy high school English anthologies?–but it stunned me. I remember laboriously copying it word by word, line by line, complete with the strange little marks I would later learn were scansion, into my diary. What the … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
In my 1000 Words class you could write anything you wanted –poem, essay, memoir, story, children’s book–as long as it was fewer than one thousand words. Does it sound easier to write short than long? It’s not. You have to take an image, a dream, a thought, a burning wish, and hone and pare it … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Wendy Chin-Tanner
Last week I tucked myself behind a long black semi, far enough back so he could see me and my rattletrap moving truck in his big side mirrors. I do this sometimes on the highway when I’m tired or troubled or just want someone else to take over a little of the decision-making. Truckers (with a … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Gerald Stern
Last week, late at night, the fire alarm in my cheap motel began to shriek. Doors opened up and down the hall and men began to emerge: huge men, small men, men in their underwear, one on crutches, one pushing a walker, one carrying a case of beer, one sweating as if just out of … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by James Baldwin
On James Baldwin and Diverse Literature
Putting those recalcitrant toddler cancer cells to bed...
your own PDK for writing
a collection of beautiful words.....
Political Tentacles
Objects, Memory and Meaning
If it can't be said in a hundred words, then it can't be said in a thousand.
sewing a handmade wardrobe
"drink from the well of your self and begin again" ~charles bukowski
The Good Things Black People Do, Give and Receive All Over The World
Musings on poetry, language, perception, numbers, food, and anything else that slips through the cracks.
Thoughts on the world around me
the literary asylum
Bipolar is my superpower
