Recently, I read a conversation that the poet Stephane Mallarme had with the artist Degas. (T.V.F. Brogan) Degas complained to Mallarme that he was having trouble coming up with noble sentiments or profound thoughts to put in poems. Mallarme replied that poetry isn’t made out of ideas; it is made out of words. How many […]
A friend of mine, three weeks into January, told me that he had resolved to work out in the gym for the coming year. I asked him how it was going and he said, “Well I am going to wait until February, so that all of the New Year Resolution people drop out and it […]
Thank you dear readers old and new for sticking with me into the new year. I am grateful for you! 2012 will bring some new things to this blog: new author interviews, more talk about books, and hopefully some more pictures. I haven’t posted many original photos in the past, but everyone likes to look. […]
May this season be filled with cheer for you. Or if not cheer, then wonder. Or if not wonder, than at least a decent slice of pie.
In a recent letter from a friend, he discussed his love of May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude. This was one of the first books I read when I began to think about writing. Solitude spurred my love affair with May Sarton. In her writing she is disarmingly honest about her struggles with personal relationship, her own difficult temperament, […]
I have been writing for several years now about my predicament of being both queer and rural. On one hand, I love living where I do. There is not a thirty mile commute to work in gridlock traffic. I rarely have to wait in line for more than ten minutes to buy anything. And there […]
I am starting to realize as I write edits on poems for my chapbook, that I will judged by readers on poems that I wrote a long while ago. This publishing business takes so long that our “current” work being seen by readers can be several years old. It is humbling for sure. It is […]
I recently read a draft of a poem that had the line “Why recently, I am so drawn to dilapidation.” If you read my recent post, you will know that I most whole-heartedly agree with that statement! Again and again, I am being drawn to images, places, and people that are past their prime. […]
Boolean Searching In 2001, I started college to pursue my dream of becoming a writer. I wanted to get an education that would help me write my experience of being raised by two moms in suburban Oregon in the 1980s and 90s, but even then, in my formative years as an academic, I knew I […]
This weekend has been filled with a small accretion of idea bits and fragments, that have sort of reached a critical mass in my head. If my mind were a junk drawer, it would be time to clean it out. One thing that struck me this weekend was my tendency to pick up old books, even if […]