Monthly Archives: September 2017

Richard’s Sept. 24th Poetry Retreat – Duncan – Among Other Showings the Show Don’t Tell of Marie Howe!

September 24, 2017 – 8:02 pm

Magdalene: The Woman Taken in Adultery Teacher, they said to Jesus, The Law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? –John 8:5 You know how it is when your speeding car spins on the ice at night and you think here it is? When the deer spring across the headlights? When you […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry, Poetry Writing Retreats and Workshops | Tagged , Comments (2)

Writing the Ache for God – Announcing a Poetry-As-Prayer Retreat in Calgary

September 19, 2017 – 4:20 pm

‘I feel, like Beckett, that all poetry is prayer.’ Carol Ann Duffy from an interview with Jeanette Winterson,  www.jeanettewinterson.com. I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. Derek Walcott from The Paris Review,  The Art of Poetry No. 37, 1986 I […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry As Prayer Retreats | Comments Off on Writing the Ache for God – Announcing a Poetry-As-Prayer Retreat in Calgary

Amber Tamblyn – Poet, Actor, Director – And Activist – So Done With Not Being Believed

September 17, 2017 – 2:40 pm

I have been a fan of Amber Tamblyn since I read her 2012 poetry collection Bang Ditto. Her razor sharp eye combined with a wizardry for image and metaphor. But I took her even more seriously after reading Dark Sparkler her brutal poetic expose of the imagined inner lives of female actors who died far […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Comments (0)

Irreverent, Ribald, Irrepressible and Grief Struck and Stuck – The Wild Heart of Sherman Alexie

September 16, 2017 – 11:36 am

Hunger Games I crave grief for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sweet grief, salted grief, I want so much To swallow you whole. I’m a damn sinner Who can only be saved by your fingers. Hurry, place the sacred grief on my tongue And consecrate breakfast, lunch and dinner— Or maybe not. I wish I were […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Comments (0)

Not an Elegy – A Tribute to John Ashbery (1927-2017)

September 4, 2017 – 11:31 pm

What Is Poetry The medieval town, with frieze Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow That came when we wanted it to snow? Beautiful images? Trying to avoid Ideas, as in this poem? But we Go back to them as to a wife, leaving The mistress we desire? Now they Will have to believe it […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged Comments (2)

The Bigness of Small Poems – #33 in a Series – The Ah! Ha! Genius of Jack Gilbert

September 2, 2017 – 10:49 pm

The Cucumbers of Praxilla of Sicyon What is the best we leave behind? Certainly love and form and ourselves. Surely those. But it is the mornings that are hard to relinquish, and music and cucumbers. Rain on trees, empty piazzas in small towns flooded with sun. What we are busy with doesn’t make us groan […]

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