Thinking about my father today, so I thought I’d post an excerpt from my memoir Rocket Lessons about growing up as a Rocket Kid. Like the men who built the railroads, Dad was an adventurer. In space, what mattered was audacity, not polish. Manners were not part of the calculation set. But my father was not even as calm as other rocket engineers. He was blessed with a thundering voice and a quirky nervous system…
I’m participating in the wonderful Poetry Month event Kelli Russell Agodon is organizing, the Big Poetry Book Giveaway. I’m offering my own book, Femme au chapeau, and also Dorianne Laux’s What We Carry, a book I think essential to any poetry library. To enter my giveaway, leave a comment here and be sure to include your email address. I’ll print out your names and fish the two winners out of a bowl on May 1,…
Ted Kooser in Poetry Home Repair Manual on the value of details in a poem: It’s the details that make experiences unique and compelling. It s watching one particular old woman in a cardigan sweater burn wallpaper in a barrel, pushing it down and down with a crowbar. Finely detailed writing won’t make it a poem, but it will bring the reader into the scene, whatever scene you’re setting, so that you can perform whatever…
I was stunned to look at Elizabeth Bishop’s early draft of her famous villanelle, “One Art.” It was such a shapeless mess that had I penned it, I would have thrown it away not long afterward as being hopeless. Yet Bishop was one of the most dogged revisers the art of poetry has ever known. She claimed to have taken 20 years to revise “The Moose.” This article gives a peek at her 17 extant…
It’s become a tradition to join the April Poetry Month Poem-A-Day challenge. I’ve done it for several years. This year, I plan to revise a poem a day. The last thing I need is more unfinished drafts. If you want to generate new work, here are a few sites offering ways to celebrate: Poets.org – 30 Ways to CelebrateFor TeachersThe Official NaPoWriMo site — the biggest and most comprehensive, listing 280 related sitesPoetic Asides hosting…
I’m happy to be a pin on the literary map of one of the more exciting journals online, Fringe. Here’s my Mt. Diablo pin-drop verse. Just scroll down on the left side of the world map to read my lines. Fringe is always coming up with interesting ideas, genres, and literary work. Disclaimer: I do interviews for Fringe. Still, I’m entitled to my opinion, and it’s that you should check out Fringe. Their Maps issue…
In the po-biz, some days you get the lowering clouds and some days, the double rainbow. The trick is to keep sending them out, no matter how discouraging it can be. I’ve been circulating a manuscript for over two years now, and as it goes out, it evolves, especially if an editor made comments in the process of rejecting it. Yesterday I went walking after the storm had abated in the early evening, to find…
The two-sided coin buys you into the game of publishing, but really it’s more like a 17-sided coin, with only one reverse: 17 turn-downs for every acceptance. With that as my best average, I’m pleased to have had my poem “The Pearl” accepted recently by Indiana University Northwest’s Spirits magazine, for their Spring 2011 issue. And for that lovely news, I paid with the usual 17 rejection notes, some of them very pleasing for a…
Find new non-contest poetry presses to submit your manuscript to! Several new entries on my page of poetry book publishers that read outside of contests. It seems as though more presses are accepting unsolicited submissions, though some charge a reading fee. But I think the tide of all-contest-poetry-publishing may be turning back to a more diverse way of finding new books and supporting presses. I don’t mind a reading fee, especially if you’re promised some…
It’s hard not to get whiplash this week, switching between disasters in Japan and the revolution in Libya. My heart still sends up many prayers to suffering Japan. Japan has a tradition of making paper cranes for luck, a tradition that found its way into one of my poems. Here’s to recovery in Japan: At the Thousand Cranes Auto Repair The women were making and the men waitingin the room provided. Folding a square piece…