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Random Thoughts: The Gratitude Edition

humor poetry

cornucopia

Some random thoughts before people wake up in this house and the madness of Thanksgiving begins:

  • First of all, I won’t bore you with the usual thankfulness for family and friends and health and roofs over one’s head.
  • Whoops.
  • Has anyone else noticed the rise in comfort food consumption (CFC) since the electoral college’s election of Trump?
  • Free verse. Whoever captured it in the first place? And how did its rescue become such a cause célèbre?
  • Sunrises. Always be grateful for sunrises. By comparison, sunsets are rather commonplace.
  • Poetic touchstones: Frost, Yeats, Kooser, Wright, Gilbert, Dickinson, Szymborska, Kenyon, Roethke, WCW, Stevens, the Chinese and the Japanese of old.
  • I’m grateful for two books under the belt, with #3 off to the races.
  • I’m grateful for readers who support new poets whose books are unavailable at local libraries (to the tune of ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me”).
  • And economists who speak up when thrifty sorts balk at the price of poetry books: “That’s only 30 cents a poem! And besides, why aren’t you so thrifty when it comes to your daily ice coffee (size: Honkin’), your monthly phone plan (size: Macy’s Parade balloon), your cable bill (size: outrageous), and your cases of bottled water (size: totally unnecessary)?” (Good question!)
  • I’m grateful for perspective.
  • Can we give thanks for the resurgence of print books? As was true with Mark Twain, news of its death was greatly exaggerated.
  • And what about local bookstores run by mom and pop? If they’re close enough, talk to your economist again and forego that amazon discount. Less to a conglomerate capitalist behemoth and more to writers. As a reader and patron of the arts, isn’t that what you’re about? Put your money where your principles and precepts are.
  • Has anyone else noticed the rise in people watching comfort movies on Hallmark  (CMOH) since the electoral college’s election of Trump?
  • Shakespeare. Always give thanks for Shakespeare. And reread two plays (minimum) a year, one comedy, one tragedy–each metaphors for your life.
  • Speaking of classics, have you ever noticed how many poets read the King James Version of the Bible, especially its most poetic books (e.g. the Psalms) for inspiration and rhythmic tutelage? Amen to that!
  • Personally, I take comfort in Ecclesiastes, easily my favorite Old Testament book.
  • If any of your grandparents are still alive, give thanks. If one or both of your parents are still alive, give thanks. And overlook their shortcomings by reminding yourself of your own.
  • I am thankful for people who are kind on-line, a place where trolls in basements virtually proliferate and pillage virtual villages of good will. It’s easy to be an anonymous bad-ass, but to be an anonymous decent person? Less so.
  • I’m thankful for the first ritual of the day, my daily coffee (bread was otherwise occupied).
  • Let’s hear it for poetry markets, for poetry editors and readers who take huge swaths of their time to read would-be, wanna-be, and is-be poets’ best efforts!
  • Has anyone else noticed the rise in people drinking alcoholic beverages (PDAB) since the electoral college’s election of Trump?
  • Which reminds me, we give thanks for newspapers, journalism, objectivity, facts, and truth… the victims of demagoguery the world over.
  • Speaking of, give thanks for every country in the world where peace rules the land. May we do our best to spread it to countries where that is not the case.
  • For ars poetica and ars blogica.
  • For any reader who made it this far. Thank you! May you stay cool, calm, collected and well-read as we enter the holiday season!

Rich Poets and Other Mythological Beasts

humor poetry

benjamins

A lot of people want to be writers, but the day-to-day reality of it isn’t easy. What works is being obsessed with writing. Like looking at your cellphone–instead of “I can’t get through my day without constantly checking for texts,” it’s “I can’t get through my day if I don’t write!” Instead of “Must. Look. At. My. Cell.” it’s “Must. Write. Something. Now!” Instead of ignoring the person across from you at the dinner table by engaging with your binkie (read: phone), it’s ignoring the person no longer across from you at the dinner table because you stole away to your writing place (read: your writing place).

It is both tempting and amusing for writers to dream big. They think of fame in their chosen field. Not only fame, but its trickster cousin twice removed, fortune. The mansion. The pool. The publishers on the phone begging for another book because they just sold movie rights to the last.

I suppose there’s a camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle chance that these dreams might come true for novelists and screen writers, but poets? It is to laugh.

Can we really picture Billy Collins wearing sunglasses at night (á la Corey Hart) while he goes to New York restaurants so he won’t be mobbed by groupies for autographs (which he would be forced to sign in blank verse, of all things)?

Or how about Mary Oliver living in one of those “looks simple but costs a fortune” ranches out in the wilderness (which her lawyer bought for her)? The great unwashed can work 9 to 5, but Mary punches the clock by going outside at 10 a.m., watching a few Canada geese fly over, and returning home for lunch served by a nutritionist/cook. Her afternoon looks like this: a nap.

Since we truck in literary terminology, let’s get this straight right out of the proverbial gate: “Rich poet” is an oxymoron. No poet ever made his or her fortune on poetry. But it’s human nature, I suppose, to happily delude oneself. Like buying scratch lottery tickets. “Maybe this time… maybe me…”

Uh, no. “Maybe not” is what you’re looking for.

So it’s Onward Christian (or Jewish or Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, atheist or agnostic) Soldier. You can’t write for the money, you must write for the intrinsic reward. And intrinsic rewards, on the going market, don’t pay much. Hope, then, that they pay attention. At the very least. For poems, attention is as good as cash. Readers are riches. If a hundred people read your poem, it’s as good as a hundred dollars.

Instead of Benjamin, just picture readers crowded onto that legal tender. And keep the change!

*************************************************************************

Two copies of  Lost Sherpa of Happiness left at Amazon. More on the way! (That’s click bait. That’s also rich.)

Poems That Date Themselves

poetry reading poetry

football

When you say a literary work “dates itself,” you might mean it is old-fashioned or representative of another era, as in a classic work by John Donne or John Milton, maybe. It’s possible, however, for a more recent work to date itself, too, in that society’s norms change, sometimes more swiftly than we expect.

If you want to know if a poem has dated itself in this manner, there is no better laboratory than a younger generation of readers. Reading Gary Gildner’s “First Practice” to young sports lovers may lead to some surprises. Some “mysteries” for them would be easily interpreted by their parents and grandparents.

The poem details a first football practice (though the sport is not mentioned) led by an old-school coach and veteran of war. Let’s take a look at the poem first:

 

“First Practice” by Gary Gildner

After the doctor checked to see
we weren’t ruptured,
the man with the short cigar took us
under the grade school,
where we went in case of attack
or storm, and said
he was Clifford Hill, he was
a man who believed dogs
ate dogs, he had once killed
for his country, and if
there were any girls present
for them to leave now.
No one left. OK, he said, he said I take
that to mean you are hungry
men who hate to lose as much
as I do. OK. Then
he made two lines of us
facing each other,
and across the way, he said,
is the man you hate most
in the world,
and if we are to win
that title I want to see how.
But I don’t want to see
any marks when you’re dressed,
he said. He said, Now.

 

Right out of the gate, the first two lines, which reference a rather routine physical practice done by doctors to prospective football players before any season began, would perplex today’s youth. More perplexing still might be these words:

the man with the short cigar took us
under the grade school,
where we went in case of attack
or storm

Readers might be mightily challenged by the words “under the grade school” and “in case of attack,” even in this age of nuclear saber rattling. Who can blame them? Who can conceive that people of an age familiar to me were once told to crouch under school desks in the event of an atomic bombing?

Younger readers might be given pause by the lines “if / there were any girls present / for them to leave now” if they take it literally. The thought of boys being called girls as an insult by an adult? Dated, probably. So politically incorrect in this day and age that it just doesn’t happen (and if it does, like kitty videos, it’ll “goes viral” in a hurry).

You might even find readers who are convinced this poem was about war, not sports, unless they wisely point out the words “if we are to win / that title I want to see how.” Unfortunately, the final lines might muddy the waters anew: “But I don’t want to see / any marks when you’re dressed.”

Marks? On clothes?

You see the problem. Read in the 1960s — the decade Gildner was no doubt recalling — “First Practice” is a simple and charming take on authority abused and innocence bewildered, so much so that the poet recalls it all these years later. But without the benefit of 50 years, the poem’s assumptions about its readers hits some turbulence. Kids might be intrigued by the poem, but they’re more likely to be perplexed.

Time does funny things, in other words, just as much to more recent poems as to truly ancient ones, but one purpose of poems is to become snapshots in time, historical records, remembrances–if you’ll forgive–of things past, such as of a first practice, for instance. One that becomes a lasting impression. And a very good poem.

And Now, the Book Tour

humor Lost Sherpa of Happiness poetry

Sherpa

Ah, yes. The dreaded book tour. Writing a book is long and arduous, sure, but the marketing? As they say in Central America, “Aye, Dios.” And as they say of high rises, it’s a whole ‘nother story!

My editor has set up a most complicated plan, but that’s the price you pay when you play in the high-demand field of poetry. As P.T. Barnum once allegedly said, “The masses must be pleased.”

I’ll start in Boston, of course, because it’s closest. The theme here will be “Banned in Boston!” It sure helped sales of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nothing like a bunch of Boston Brahmins frowny-facing your poems. “What’s in these poems?” the poetry-reading population will wonder. “Surely something better than woodpeckers and bumble bees and a summer’s day!” As my editor is fond of saying: “Racy sells. So does censorship.”

Then it’ll be on to Worcester. Pronounced “Wuss-tah,” people. Please do not give me that “War-chester” stuff. Take it to Ohio, or some other state of confusion.

Third stop? New Haven. Boolah-boolah. Pom-poms. Ping-Pong. My stop there will be brief and hyphenated. The books will be pre-signed (editor’s idea). I must slash out my name on the facing page and sign it below. I have no idea what this means or why it’s done, but my editor says it means something and must be done. It’s what authors do. And I’m playing author (“all the world’s a stage”). Forget the backstory.

Brooklyn bookstores are fourth. Readings, readings, readings. To be followed by Q & A. For the thousandth time: “Who’s lost? You or the sherpa?”

For the thousandth-and-first time: “Read the last poem. The eponymous one.”

“The hippopotamus one?”

Then I will feel my editor tugging at my elbow-patched tweed sport coat, pulling me away. I’ll want to ask her, “Who does this anymore? Don’t poets just make racy commercials for their poetry collections and upload them to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, from the comfort of their homes?”

“They do,” she said. “But they’re mostly 23-years-old writing about love and lust and ego while puckering up to the camera.”

“That’s legal?” (Incredulous)

“In Ohio. Let’s go….”

 

 

 

It’s a Sherpa!

Lost Sherpa of Happiness poetry poetry books publishing

Sherpa

The new book is a preemie. Expected in December, arrived in November. And it’s a Sherpa! Most unusually, a lost one. I figured, if I ever hired a sherpa to see me to the summit, that’s exactly what would happen. Nowhere to go but up, and we still get lost.

A few people have asked, “Do the poems in Lost Sherpa of Happiness have something to do with Nepal or Mount Everest?” Uh, no. Like most things in life, it’s more complicated.

The idea started with the story of Siddhartha Gautama, the Indian prince who would eventually become the Buddha. Legend has it that he lived a royal life in a royal palace when his royal curiosity got the better of him (sound familiar, Adam and Eve?). When Siddhartha journeyed outside the protective walls of his royal digs, he encountered old age, sickness, and death. This shook him up mightily. So much so that he gave all his worldly goods up and set out on a quest for enlightenment and nirvana (which look a lot like happiness in my book).

These poems, then, are about man’s endless–and often rocky–search for happiness. Thomas Jefferson called it “the pursuit of happiness,” and Buddhists and Hindus call it samsara, but round and round it goes because the line is not a direct one and may take more than this lifetime.

Why? Because life isn’t easy and the obstacles are many. Interestingly enough, these obstacles exist as much INSIDE your head as OUTSIDE your body. Thus, the poems range from the challenges of childhood to middle age to the wintry days of our lives’ Decembers.

The second of the new book’s three sections (called “searches”) treats exclusively on animals. We’re not the only ones who have it rough, trust me. My hope was to mirror life by including humor, sadness, nostalgia for the past, hope for the future, desperation, and joy. And as was true with my first poetry collection, The Indifferent World, nature poems are as profuse as birdsong in April.

My sophomore effort: If I smoked, I’d light up a cigar to celebrate. If I drank, I’d pour myself a tumbler of Jameson Irish whiskey. As I do neither, I’ll just take a deep breath, inhale the crisp air of gratitude, and try to keep up with my sherpa, who seems to be losing me….

 

Poems To Be Experienced, Not Deciphered

poetry poetry journals

poetry mag

I’ve been mildly critical of Poetry at times, but today I come to praise its pages. Editor Don Share has started an occasional series called “The View from Here” wherein people from various fields write their personal thoughts on poetry. There are five such essays in the October 2017 issue, and one by Kate Dwyer, a freelance writer, hits a chord that is proven by a poem earlier in the magazine. First, a quote from Dwyer’s piece, “Learning to Pivot”:

“For most of my life, I thought reading poetry was like unraveling geometric proofs. Use a series of facts to solve for an unknown. Find the measure of x to solve for the last angle within a shape. Geometry had rules, and so, I thought, did poetry. The syllables of metered verse fit together like jigsaw pieces; in high school, I thought a poem was something to be solved, that the pieces were supposed to click together at its close. But these solutions never satisfied, and I suspected I was approaching verse from the wrong perspective altogether. How could I get through a creative writing degree if I couldn’t read a poem? Finally, one of the professors explained that a poem is meant to be experienced, not deciphered. He said poetry was short-form prose with line breaks, and the visceral reaction to a poem was often the most truthful. I could work with that.”

Reading thoughts like Dwyer’s is one thing; experiencing them firsthand quite another. I can think of no better proof of Dwyer’s professor’s claim than a poem earlier in this same issue, Dean Young’s “Permitted a Meadow.” Ours is not to understand, ours is simply to experience. The poem is a headscratcher, yes, but the words are oh-so-beautiful to listen to. Listen for yourself:

 

“Permitted a Meadow” by Dean Young

I like the blue pill best.
Just like a gladiola, its true flower
is invisible.
The rest is holy.
Not like in that Tintoretto
where no one knows god is dying,
just the usual jingle and squawk
from the birdmongers then sudden
downpour, a few of the demons dwelling
beneath the earth tentatively stir.
Not like that. Not tentative. Imploring.
The wound tingles.
A head of foam forms on the mountain.
Into my hand is placed a Mycenaean horse.
Into my hand is placed a waxed hand.
The filament will not break.
The fox gets closer.
Mint barks.
5% of its life, an ant is active.
The rest is holy.
Wolfhowl ringtone is holy.
Sticking out your tongue
in the rearview mirror is holy.
Any song that never leaves the lungs,
all us animals garlanded and belled.

You could, of course, scoff at some of Dean Young’s poems for being impenetrable, but that would be because you were approaching them as math problems, like Kate Dwyer before she had her eureka moment.

What if you just permitted a poem like “Permitted a Meadow” to wash over you? What if you just freed yourself to “experience” it and that was good enough?

I think I answered my own question.

Mommy Dearest vs. Writers Block (Like Godzilla vs. King Kong!)

poetry word choice writing

draft

Just finished John McPhee’s newest collection of essays, Draft No. 4, and though it’s not a writing advice book per se, it does contain its fair share of writerly wisdom, many of interest to poets. Here are some quotes from the book along with comments from the peanut gallery.

  • “Though a man be more prone and able for one kind of writing than another, yet he must exercise all.”

COMMENT: This is not McPhee, actually. It’s Ben Jonson. I agree, though admit I’ve been only writing poetry the past few years. Jonson must mean “in his lifetime,” then. No, really. The point is well taken. And I do dream of novels still. They wake me up.

  • “It takes as long as it takes.”

COMMENT: Also not McPhee, but his boss, New Yorker editor William Shawn. McPhee was amazed at how much time Shawn was giving to McPhee’s article as the New Yorker hurtled toward a deadline. Shawn’s coolness under pressure and unrelenting attention to revision and detail sent a message. Don’t rush. Too many writers want to be published more than they want to write–and writing is rewriting first, then doing it right (editing, proofing) second. Hold, hold, hold before you send!

  • This quote is advice McPhee mailed to a former student, Joel, who was making a living as a writer but claimed to be suffering writer’s block: “Dear Joel: You are writing, say, about a grizzly bear. No words are forthcoming. For six, seven, ten hours no words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been getting. What do you do? You write, ‘Dear Mother.’ And then you tell your mother about the block, the frustration, the ineptitude, the despair. You insist that you are not cut out to do this kind of work. You whine. You whimper. You outline your problem, and you mention that the bear has a fifty-five-inch waist and a neck more than the thirty inches around but could run nose-to-nose with Secretariat. You say the bear prefers to lie down and rest. The bear rests fourteen hours a day. And you go on like that as long as you can. And then you go back and delete the ‘Dear Mother’ and all the whimpering and whining, and just keep the bear. “

COMMENT: Brilliant! McPhee’s strategy is to tap into our natural tendency to complain, so why not complain about the project that’s blocking us? If you’re struggling with a poem, it works just as well. You write to Mom and go on and on about the imagery and the word choice you’re trying and before you know it, you’ll be trying new imagery with new words because, well, you’re one eloquent whiner, aren’t you?

  • “Ideally, a piece of writing should grow to whatever length is sustained by its selected material–that much and no more.”

COMMENT: This is from the chapter called “Omission,” where McPhee reminds us that what we choose NOT to write (or choose to take out when revising) is often more important than what we put in. Amen, brother.

  • Michelangelo: “The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows… Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

COMMENT: Also from “Omission.” For poets, the white page or monitor replaces “block of stone” and the word “poem” replaces “statue.” The more words on the cutting-room (reviser-room) floor, the better.

  • This quote is advice McPhee sent his daughter, Jenny, when she was a senior at Princeton High School suffering over a piece of writing in class: “Dear Jenny: The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something–anything–out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something–anything–as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again–top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version–it if did not exist–you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day–yes, while you sleep–but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”

COMMENT: This, from the title essay, is where McPhee tells us that the lion’s share of time in writing goes to the awful first draft. Subsequent drafts go a bit smoother and faster, but only if you suffer through that all-important first draft. My only add would be “I wish” to the “Draft No. 4” part. I feel most of my poems go to “Draft No. 44.” What can I say? They’re attention hogs.

As for poets, too many claim “block” because they’re not brave enough to write a first draft. It’s garbage, they think. An embarrassment. But who’s going to read it? Only the author. And even if it’s three pages of garbage, there may be one twenty-dollar bill in the mix, accidentally thrown out with the overcooked chicken divan. Find it! Cash in! The nucleus of a poem is born!

It’s enough to make even Andrew Jackson smile.

Dying Frogs in High Windows

Lost Sherpa of Happiness my poems poetry

frog

Now there’s a mix! You don’t often get dying frogs in the same breath as a high window, but that’s the case with my poem, “Night of the Dying Frogs,” appearing in the U.K. e-zine The High Window this week.

This poem, like many I write, is based on a rather unreal real-life experience. One day when both the rain and I were driving, I came across a stretch of road that was bubbling in more ways than one. I soon managed to figure out what the problem was–the macadam was alive not only with puddles boiling with rainfall but with frogs jumping for their lives (and no, I don’t live in Calaveras County).

They were all over the place, heavy yet lively, bull frogs leaping con brio, all headed in the same direction. As no one was behind me, I braked, hoping to swerve my way through them, but their numbers seemed legion, and I’m not sure my tires managed the gauntlet, tread as they might.

Frogs or no frogs, that morning made for a difficult drive to work. Darkness. Sheets of rain. Standing water on the roads. Low visibility. In short, drivers were knee-deep in trouble. But hey, I made it, and the polliwog of an idea was born. One tail less and four legs later, the poem from that unusual episode was born.

“Night of the Dying Frogs” will appear in my new book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness, coming soon to an amphibious bookstore near you. Many thanks to David Cooke and Anthony Costello for making it a part of their journal.

 

 

Word Up!

poetry writing poetry

dictionary

Aspiring poets always think it’s all about the poetry. Read poetry. Write poetry. Study poetry. Buy poetry (via those expensive stores, M, F, and A). But, no. There’s more to it than that. There’s the simple stuff, often overlooked. Let’s start with words.

I can hear you now: “Words? What do you mean by words. I use words all the time! What do you think my poems are made of–broccoli stalks?”

Well, first of all, that would be pretty cool. And nutritious. But I mean word choice–or, as the French call it, le mot juste–and word choice depends upon a solid store of words, one that has a loading dock out back where trucks marked Brains R Us can bring in more supplies each day.

School didn’t end with school, in other words. You need to boost your vocabulary, mostly so you can understand as many words as possible when you read poetry, but also so you can avoid using these words in your own poems.

Ha-ha. A little curveball for you. I say avoid using them because, like thesaurus-itis (that dreaded disease), strutting-your-vocabulary-itis can be life-threatening to poems. Occasionally you will use a new vocabulary word, but mostly you will take a pass on it, especially if it’s a fancy, Latin-based word.

Don’t get me wrong–the dead language will have its place in your poems now and then, but the lion’s share will be Greek and Anglo-Saxon based. Plus, you want the nuclear option to use any old (or new) word you know because that’s power, the kind found in your pencil or keyboard thanks to the cauliflower pulling the strings (we’re back you your brain via vegetables, you see).

So, how do you do it? One simple way to boost the number of words available to your poems is to sign up for Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. I look forward to my morning word-in-the-inbox. Yes, it’s often familiar (like today’s “malign”), but its roots, related words, and etymology are often not so familiar. What’s more, M-W gives you two examples of the words from the real (vs. the one in Washington D.C. right now) world.

How cool is that? Ask your air conditioner, then word-up

 

 

A Sunday Stream of Consciousness

poetry

stream

  • It’s Sunday, but there are no Sabbaths for the monkey mind.
  • “Monkey mind” being the enemy of Buddha-like meditation and the friend of poet-like brainstorming-without-a-banana.
  • I kind of like the “free” subscriptions you get when you enter a poetry publication’s annual contest. It kind of makes up for the expense of missing first place by kind of making you deceive yourself about the meaning of “free.”
  • In poetry, you cut to the bone, taking a scalpel to expressions like “kind of,” for starters.
  • While drafting poetry, I have found that many bad long poems are hiding good short poems. Ones in the second trimester or so.
  • I proved this to myself by rewriting a long poem Dickinson-style. All I needed was a few random dashes and capital letters (found in Aisle Emily, bottom shelf, at Ocean State Job Lot).
  • The cover of the October issue of Poetry reminds me of the Beatles‘ White Album.
  • Speaking of, I wonder how Jorie Graham feels about being the centerfold.
  • There’s a new sheriff in town (starring Kevin Young) at The New Yorker. Too bad they had to close submissions on July 3rd. The good news? The market reopens on Nov. 1st, and just because your poems were sent home before doesn’t mean they will again
  • Which reminds me: Poetry is subjective. A lot rides on particular editors’ eyes. If it gets that far.
  • Which is not to say there’s no such thing as “bad poetry” (I often send it to its room without supper).
  • Still trying to get over my prejudice against form poems by reading Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax.
  • Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who warned about two sure things in life: death and syntaxes?
  • As usual, the list of National Book Awards for Poetry includes books and authors a.) I haven’t read and b.) I haven’t even heard of. Guess I need to listen better.
  • Does anyone still write poems with pencil and paper? I do. But it’s ideas for poems only. Once I start writing, it’s on the trusty word processor.
  • When a poetry manuscript is accepted for publication, the toughest part is starting the next poetry manuscript. Especially with so many laurels lying around, waiting to be rested upon.
  • Poets need more patience than doctors. Can you say “wait time”? As a submitter of your work, you’d better be good at it. The competition is fierce and the numbers are legion.
  • My first love in poetry is predictably Frost.
  • I do not think “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening” is corny. So sue me.
  • If you call yourself a reader but don’t read poetry, are you really a reader?
  • If a tree falls in the wilderness, does it make a sound?
  • No and yes.