Publishing My Poetry as a Practice Long ago, in a less digital world, I wrote things and sent them through the mailbox to a few print magazines to see if they wanted to publish them. I enclosed a self-address, stamped envelope (the old SASE — anyone remember that acronym?) and waited, often for months. Most of the time, my poems came back to me like homing pigeons in the old SASE, sometimes with an editor’s…
I can’t help it. I’m a poet intoxicated in springtime, renewal and faith. Step aside, war and riot, prejudice run amok, mass shootings and atmospheric rivers, ignorance abroad and becoming endemic. Step aside, the ruin of the world — it’s like the ruin of winter. And I am a fervent believer in humanity and spring. Evrywhere, I find evidence to back up my faith. To celebrate (before the next bomb cyclone drops on our heads…
Sometimes speaking needs to be be done both plainly and in poetry. The essayist’s keyboard writes journalistically, but a poet’s pen tends to curve. It speaks truth aslant of literal meaning. It breaks into lines, cadges meaning from comparisons, and is known to divert utterance with entertaining rhythm or rhyme. I’m thinking about saying a thing with curves, speaking plainly in poetry. Uttering my truth in metaphor while making its essentials clear as glass. To…
I’m thrilled and honored to be the Featured Poet in the September Issue of Blue Heron Speaks. This wonderful online poetry journal has a goal of presenting “messages of inspiration, support, and nourishment for the soul.”And they really do offer heart-centered poems that speak to seekers after beauty and peace. My three poems include the title poem from my forthcoming collection, Arabesque. An excerpt from the poem treats the word “arabesque” in its other meaning,…
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” – Henry David Thoreau. When I #amwriting either prose or poetry, I first write long and thin. By that I mean a lot of words to say not as much as I will wind up with, compressed. Having just finished what I hope is the final revision of a 400-page novel, I know the meaning of short…