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A lot of days of writing what I don’t like. As Nick says, it is often a poem speaks to you. It is almost better to read and write by long turns rather than flipping to and fro, being continually caught back by how good others are. Inhibiting that. Or to read what doesn’t catch […]

Poetic Aside daily challenges can be broad (a memory, an animal), but then, it’s never the idea that’s valuable or unique, it’s the implementation. The official NaPoWriMo (National Poem Writing Month) prompts for the U.S. are also rather open ended (write about paradise, or nicknames) but Joanne Merriam is setting a different bent with the […]

Narrow Road to the Interior (Shambala, 1991) of Matsuo Basho’s trip about northern Japan in 1689. Sam Hamill’s forward says that over the 4 years it took Basho to polish his travelogue of the trip we took with his friend, some things shifted to more figurative than the literal walkabout. Like the tight zoom on […]

which I will probably double-back on momentarily… probably even during… I am trying to sort out the drive and appeal of subjects and tones chosen. Why does something matter to someone in the context of their lives? Why decide what someone says is worth saying or reading? Another has the same pieces to life puzzle […]

An English teacher finds himself fallen down the rabbit hole and stands now before the giant mushroom: “I mean that I teach poetry.” “I’m not surprised,” said the Caterpillar. “Poetry has a thing or two to learn. It has more feet than I do and they’re terribly difficult to keep track of.” A quote from […]