Post Holiday Gifts, Rebecca Brown and G.I. Joe

When I was young the day after Christmas was reserved for showing off the gifts that I had been given to my friends and vice versa. Sometimes we were allowed to play with the new toys and sometimes we only got to look. * * * I have been reading Rebecca Brown’s collection of short […]

Finding Poetry on the Roof at Dawn

The weather this week has been very cold and clear. The Pacific Northwest is not known for its sunny winter climate. I have been sitting in the light for a few minutes each day and giving thanks for this small blessing, sun in a season that usually brings abundant rain. Advent is the season of […]

Writing and Arrival

While earning my undergraduate degree, I was ten years older than most of the students in my classes. I was filled with gratitude to finally know what I wanted to do with my life. I was mature enough to see my dreams through. But I struggled with the fear that I had come to writing […]

Found Poems, From Your Own Material?

The wisdom of the Academy of American Poets website defines a found poem as “poems [that] take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.” The Academy continues […]

Poetry: Nice Work If You Can Get It

I stumbled across a collection of essays at work by Thomas Lynch called “Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade.” Lynch, a poet, also works as an undertaker. He writes about how one trade informs the other. Nancy Peacock the award-winning author is another writer who had a nonliterary job to pay the bills. She […]

Is Your Blog Eating Your Blog?

The past two weeks have kept me moving. Graduate school applications, academic resumes, writing statements, Form A and Form B burned up a good amount of time and energy. Between working full-time and panicking about my academic future, I haven’t felt up to doing much writing…Excluding the essays and letters that I’ve been agonizing over, […]

Line by Line the Poem Comes Together

When I was seven or eight, I wanted drawing lessons. Both of my parents, art teachers, were not eager to pay for me to learn how to draw. My father said that he would teach me. He set to work helping me draw dinosaurs from illustrations in a book. These weren’t children’s drawings; they were […]