Category Archives: Poetics

If you never risk speaking in public, to a public, then you may feel safe in your practice, but you may also feel alone and anonymous and mute. You might also not have a critical voice. It’s like not voting. And if you don’t vote you’re a hypocrite to complain about the outcome. If you […]

I have been scrupulous since elementary school to note what draft number a poem is, giving hooks for cross-referencing with date started, how many drafts it takes to end. Most of the early poems are on paper aka largely lost/mislaid/likely to be foisted at me from one of mom’s sheds, but ones I have from […]

What is the unit of composition? The line? The phrase? The sentence? The argument? The image? Life-wide? Sound? Form? Metaphor? Rhythmical unit? When I look at how I think poetically, or generally, there’s a lot of constraint, but also a pattern of deconstructing and reconstructing strategies. I like to take words apart, dissect ideas. What […]

Eric Folsom is the Poet Laureate of Kingston. On finding your way to a new poem he advises, “To start, you want to look for a poem-shaped hole.  Choosing a subject, looking for inspiration, doing piles of research, that’s all well and good.  But what you aim for is the poem and the poem is […]

11 questions of the how and why of poeming. What do the poems teach? I hope poetry, along with conversations, blogging, getting to know particular people better, that it keeps my brain in tune to become more aware, astute, observant, knowing how to sidestep bias or discern patterns. They all teach me how to be […]