Category Archives: Uncategorized

In 1978, Carolyn Forché published her poem “The Colonel.” Debates ensued about whether this piece of writing is truly a poem or whether it is prose. At first glance it looks like a poem, a thick, narrative poem. On closer … Continue reading →

Discipline is a tricky word for artists. It is for me, at least. As a noun, there’s the larger, inclusive meaning: a branch of knowledge and there’s also the practice of training oneself or another to obey rules. Sometimes a … Continue reading →

                        for Pat Schneider  6/1/34 – 8/10/20 Hot cornbread in cold milk. Singing all the way home from Chicopee. The way she said Missouri and diabetes. Her long legs and the sweep of her skirt. Hands steepled before her mouth. … Continue reading →

We take workshops, classes, read books, go to seminars and lectures. We follow the gurus of the writing world who tell us the inside scoop on how to best get our ideas and images on the page. We want to … Continue reading →

Black voices have always unequivocally articulated how white people benefit from being white. Black voices have taught me to listen, to take responsibility for my own level of awareness and to continue to educate myself about racial inequity. In this … Continue reading →

In these weeks full of words like isolation, quarantine, flattening curves, N95 masks, social distancing and ventilators, it can be hard to find our own words. We miss our free-range poetry, and our independently-minded characters. We can feel trapped both … Continue reading →

I hope you and all those you love are safe and well. A friend reminded me how lucky I am to have clean, running water, electricity, a phone and a computer, to have enough food and a sturdy roof over … Continue reading →

You have written and written, edited and revised. You want to share your work with a larger audience. You want to send your work OUT! But where? Exactly how does this process work? When you begin to look at the … Continue reading →

Writers, in fact all artists and designers, think and talk about form. What is the correct form for any piece of writing? If you were called to build a raft such that it could be sent down a river and … Continue reading →

You deserve a perfect star with one perfect seed. You deserve pods slyly open, an embroidered star with eight radiating points. You deserve a weathered husk, bark hard and mottled brown. You deserve a gnarled star in the palm of … Continue reading →