Every Morning I Try to pronounce a divine name perfectly, knowing I can’t really say its swallow-swing or enunciate the syllables a mockingbird loops in medleys, can’t whisper vowels of an airplane’s rhyming trail. Names like that must be repeated as a flower lets pollen fly. I should mimic the closed bud’s wise pause. My human mouth can hardly shape the million-zinnia alpha letter, let alone the final plosive dazzle – but I can hum…
From my collection Earth Lessons, because the roses are getting ready to pop. ROSA MAJALISLeaflets long, pubescent. Flowers deep pink in a corymb. Hips large and bottle-shaped.– Rose catalog. With five slim petals she satisfies her procreative need,enticing flying feet and wings to collude in a rage to be perpetual.Behind her sepals’ five-fingered fanshe awaits the sun’s caress. Sly señora, she knows how to meet a warm hand.Her private core is deeply gold,pollinated with the…
I was happy to find a link on Facebook the other day to a poetry video that was a collaboration between the wonderful artist and poet Patricia Wallace Jones, Beau Blue and his Blue’s Cruzio Café, and me, animating my poem One Night, Light. It made me think about the mixed-media possibilities for online poetry. I went to listen to the recordings of my poems that have appeared online and updated my website’s Online Reader,…
Thank you, Nic Sebastien, for featuring my reading of “I Spend an Afternoon with Monet” at Voice Alpha! If you haven’t spent time at Voice Alpha and Whale Sound, you’re missing one of the most delicious poetry experiences you can have online. So listen to some great poetry in April, as well as reading and writing it! Some other places with the sounds of poetry are The Cortland Review and qarrtsiluni. More zines are getting…
Thanks to the wealth of free digital media, it’s possible to incorporate listening to great poets read their work into your daily writing and reading practice. Last night i heard a great poet, Kim Addonizio, read, and it had a good effect on my approach to today’s work. Here are some youtube clips. She read with the wonderful poet Susan Browne, and Kim also played some blues harmonica. Kim Addonizio – MuseKim & Susan –…
Ren Powell is interviewed on Fiona Robyn’s Writing Our Way Home blog. I am fascinated with poets being interviewed, the questions asked and the answers given, opening windows into the intensely private and individual process of creating poems. I have an upcoming interview on Fringe with the fascinating Jeannine Hall Gailey. Stay tuned! Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.
One of my favorite poets, and my teacher, Kim Addonizio, is reading at the Walnut Creek Library on Tuesday night. Here’s the Contra Costa Times announcement. Should be a great evening. Music too! Brian Brodeur’s blog How a Poem Happens is great reading if you want the behind-the-scenes story of notable poems. This week’s interviewee is Gray Jacobik, with Brian asking questions about revision, the trigger for writing, what part inspiration plays, and all those…
You can enter here, to win either my book or Dorianne Laux’s, or go to Kelli Russell Agodon’s site for links to lots of poets giving away one copy of their book + one copy of another poetry book at the end of April. To enter, just leave your name and email! Hope April Poetry Month finds you drafting, revising, reading, and networking with other poets! I’m going to an online workshop this afternoon. Visit…
Kelli Russell Agodon’s brainstorm of the Big Poetry Book Giveaway appears to be taking hold, with lots of poets hosting a giveaway on their sites, and of course I’m giving away two books to the winner of a drawing here. You can find lots of links on Kelli’s site, and there’s still time in April to launch your own! My friend David Israel has a charming verse up on his blog this morning. Maybe you…
The Writing Site has a good list of poetry-writing prompts for children at different grade levels. If you’re teaching this April and want to include a section on poetry, this article might be useful. I’m all for kids getting into poetry early. I did, with Dylan Thomas, the Japanese haiku poets, and even Wallace Stevens (couldn’t make head or tail out of the poems but I loved the sounds the words made and some of…