A. Anupama
Wind speed is a factor. The more you can use it, the better. To be airborne, born into poetic flow, and fluid with each gesture, we need to embrace experiences. In artistic practice at our best and most honest, we trace the line of flight from birth to death. We balance on life’s axis. I’m…
Poetry is the art of sneaking up on someone. Like crocuses -- a magic trick in the lawn. Wonder is a pocketful of significance that can be taken as an antidote to most kinds of despair. Gentle is when cup-like purple flowers lie underfoot while we still need to wear winter boots. Darkness is a…
Everything in the heart is a burning device. Ovens, tiki torches, gas lighters, camp stoves, soldering tool, water heater, mosquito coil, hot glue gun, toaster. You know which your loved ones are. Device and desire are so close, when we are moving around in a piece of creative work. Using rhyme or a steady line,…
Artists have routines and work habits like everyone. Sometimes these grooves are invisible because artists so often seek out new experiences and novel ways of doing things for the sake of inspiration. I would argue that our habits are core to the quality of what actually comes out of artistic practice. One useful habit is…
Poems are not about anything. Their titles aren’t the subjects, usually only indicating a partial opening into the movement of language. Maybe poems indicate where we’ve been or where we’d like to go (or not go), but that’s just the outermost part. What they are deeply about is the same thing that alarm clocks are…
Counting syllables, counting on images to carry you, counting the stanzas in the back of your mind, counting on soul to show up in the lines. Do we count the number of fishermen laughing in January chill along the river while on our Sunday walk, and do we count on the river to carry away…
Indian necklaces are heavy in the way that the moon is heavy. When you wear one, you have to move steadily as Earth to avoid causing it to twist. The sweet glow of reflected light from its gold and gems, as everyone notices, is much more lovely than incandescence. The tidal effect in a room…
The way ice falls on us during winter holidays fills the imagination with shapes. Single-digit cold and drift-covered roads meant dangerous driving from home to hometown for me and many others this week. But I'm stubborn (as most poets inevitably must be). The pastoral mood exerted its irresistible pull, and we braved salted highways and…
It's a little bittersweet to think about how it is at the end of every semester — that mishmash of relief, pride, and sadness at wrapping up with a group of students. I'd be getting in the mood to grade a bunch of creative portfolios over the winter break if I were teaching. But I'm…
Waiting for my car at the dealership's service department this morning, I gaze at the flat-screen television in front of me, admiring a beautiful, crackling fire that should be framed by a magnificent fireplace. Yes, a little strange, but not in an unwelcome way. The Fireplace 4K experience erases some of the cold, alienating, new-car-smell,…
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