Every poem has an unconscious life…Our poems know more than we do. Read them as clues. Marie Howe, Venice, July 2014 That’s what poets do: they go to the places that most terrify them and report back. Patrick Lane, Honeymoon Bay, Vancouver Island, July 2014 Does Poetry Matter? You bet it matters! I have just […]
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DAY The hens, startled, open their beaks and freeze in that style, immobile —I was going to say immoral— their mandibles and ruddy crests, only the arteries pulsing in their necks. A woman spooked by sex: but liking it much. POEM BEGUN AT THE END A body wants another body. A soul wants another […]
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Today, Mothers’ Day, I raise a toast to the English poet Rachael Boast (1975 – ) who has been making waves across the pond for a few years but who recently made a big splash here in Canada with her second poetry collection Pilgrim’s Flower – an international nominee for 2014 for the prestigious Griffin […]
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What a journey I had this morning! It started with finding a Hirschfield quote in the 2012 book A God in the House: …poetry exists in part to enlarge us, to deliver us into the not yet known. Writing is an act that generates and expands attention. And if I’m lucky, I may write something […]
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April 27, 2014 – 11:34 pm
If I break my leg, I’ll go to a doctor, If I break my heart or of the world breaks my spirit, I will go to a poet. Jeanette Winterson, The Times, January 2007 It has an attention grabber title: Poems That Make Grown Men Cry. And happily for readers the title lives up […]
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On this Easter Monday it seems right to consider devotional poetry – poetry, whether or not explicitly religious, that reaches out to a presence, something transcendent, something that speaks to the eternal. A poetry where the “holy”, the “unspeakable” enters in. I realize this is a huge topic and I don’t want to get […]
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One great feature at the annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival held in Delray beach, Florida every January is the craft talks given by each participating poet. The one delivered this year by American poet Tim Siebles was a stand out. Two reasons. First, because he introduced me to the Filipino American poet Patrick Rosal. And […]
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April 17, 2014 – 12:46 pm
What a delight it has been to discover the poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly, author of three collections of poems and winner of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize in 1987. Her third collection The Orchard was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Circle Critics Award. Grateful thanks to the […]
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April 17, 2014 – 12:16 pm
Confession. I am afraid to go on-line these days for fear of falling down the rabbit hole of April – Poetry Month. And the blogs pouring forth their bounty of poems. Overwhelming. Yet, here I am adding to the cataract of poetry. My problem is that I have my own closer-to-home welter of words. Piles […]
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The fertility of the poetic mind! As my good friend and poet Liz commented to me today it is so surprising and wonderful the places a poet can be taken by an image. I had Liz’s comment […]
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