Just a reminder if you’re shopping this weekend that poetry books make beautiful gifts. Some nice sales, some good reasons…
Tag: literature
Warmth aligned
The curve of each line of each branch in each tree smiles at us. Clear, dark skies keep pouring heaps of stars into the lines. Silhouetted in the shrubs next to the road, several deer watch us pass by. Gratitude moves in all directions. I wish all poems were like this. It might take me…
Bio-digressive
Making art is a good way to get to know yourself and others, and it usually feels good. Sometimes not. Sometimes you can get in trouble, as my daughter did in her art class the other day when she was being less-than-cautious with scissors. She's in high school now and definitely knows better, but when…
Open or closed
My favorite word is “or,” a hinge on which possibilities can open and close securely, which is an obvious necessity when using prose. But it’s more than that to me. Ask a question using “or,” and you will understand. It requires you to imagine what might be. If you really wish to complete the thought…
Invented words
At least it’s an affordable luxury, this craft of poetry. Catch a phrase loitering around the alley of your mind, and find a place to keep it. Pretty phrases are as plentiful as the red-gold leaves turning the road into a bed of glowing embers. I'm pretty sure I spend more on my poetry practice…
Symbol song
We should sing ourselves awake. While I don't think poetry is exactly the opposite of a lullaby, I think it can rouse and invigorate us. Poetry is both a way of admitting that we often sleepwalk through life and a way to call upon a certain, deeper self to advise. Since this is about ourselves…
Marigold mind
Poets are monster slayers. I have always thought so, but I don't picture a pen as the weapon. A pen is a pretty wimpy object, if you really look at one. And I don't think our weapon is some mystical effect arising from poets' voices, which aren't any more shatteringly shrill than anyone else's. Poets…
Keep leaves
When a leaf falls on your painting, you can keep on painting. And, you can write a poem to go with it. At the New York City Poetry Festival yesterday, one of the family-friendly activities hosted by the Poetry Society of New York did involve painting and writing poetry under the magnificent plane trees of…
Water’s fall
How thirsty will we have to get? Drought looks terrible on the Hudson’s palisade, where trees have browned all along the crest. The brook in my neighborhood had dried up completely last week, but got back a trickle at least, which I noticed while walking Old Mountain Road this morning. The beech saplings alongside might…
In hand
I remember getting perfectly ticked off and putting down his novel for three months the first time I read Salman Rushdie’s work. It wasn’t because something had offended my ideas or beliefs, but that I felt as though he had played a trick on me. Designed as it was to twist expectations, I felt made…
poet | artist 