Notes to my future self who feels she can’t write
I’ve been trying to pay attention to my process this month. Clearly, at least so far, I am able to manage a daily writing practice. Why is it that I spend months and months telling myself otherwise?
Category Archives: Writing about writing
Poem-a-day challenge: A running commentary
Excerpts/teasers from my December poem-a-day!
The goldfish may or may not be drunk (a poem-a-day writing challenge)
I won’t pretend to understand the science, but Smithsonian Magazine says goldfish make alcohol to survive winter. Seems reasonable enough. I’m all about the spiked eggnog this time of year. But that’s not my only strategy for surviving winter.
Yoga mat with mouse traps: This writing practice
Over time, I imagine, I strike some kind of strange balance, but it makes it really difficult to know who I am. I have trouble seeing the “both-and.” I have trouble seeing the multitudes contained as part of a cohesive whole.
Do you feel like a successful poet? 7 ways to cope in the meantime
It’s important to find happiness and satisfaction in poetry activities that do not revolve around notices of acceptance. Here are 7 ways to cope (thrive, even!) when you get stuck thinking in terms of success and failure. As a bonus, they make you both a better poet and a better literary citizen.
You guys, people don’t understand why we write poetry
I’m after an experience. Not a recounting of an experience, but an exploration that just isn’t possible when I’m my clumsy mortal self stumbling around being an asshole (we’re all assholes), never having the right words.
On the heart’s footholds and poetry goals
When I find a phrase, an image or line that shows me something new, I believe in transformation — of the moment, of the object, of the self. And when I put them together into a finished poem, the whole world starts to make sense.
