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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I wanted to note two new books of poems that I picked up at the bookstore where I work. We buy used books and the used buyers alert me if we get a glut of poetry. It is rare for anyone to sell us a large quantity of poetry, but on Saturday someone did. Here […]
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 […]
Two of my poems were just published in the amazingly beautiful November issue of Oranges & Sardines. I am on page 38 and 39. The new issue is now online:http://issuu.com/didimenendez/docs/osnovember2009?viewMode=magazine&mode=embed More information on O&S:http://www.poetsandartists.com Available in print soon from amazon.com:http://astore.amazon.com/mipo-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=9
Chad Helder is the Stoker Award-winning editor of Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press 2008), an anthology of queer horror fiction, which he co-edited with Vince Liaguno. Helder’s first book of poetry, Pop-Up Book of Death, will be published by Queer Mojo Press, an imprint of Rebel Satori. He is […]
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 […]
Paperback, 80 pagesPublished by Rosemetal Press, October 2008ISBN: 9780978984854 Reading Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess is akin to remembering your dream. The pieces of the story are fragmentary. There is a struggle to weave a narrative thread between them and more often than not, the dream can be interpreted any number of ways depending on […]
When most people are asked to give an opinion about poetry they shrivel up like time lapsed apples. The first response out of a person’s puckered mouth usually goes, “Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” or “I am not much of a poetry person.” When did we become so fearful of poetry? How did […]