Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
Maybe you have a place like this: a spot where you see yourself with such clarity it both inspires and frightens you. For me, that’s almost always when facing, touching and diving into the Atlantic. This year, I rediscover grace for my body and a thirst for my writing life.
EVERY ROOM IN THE BODY by KERRI FRENCH / This book isn’t “just” about a high-risk pregnancy. It’s also about how we experience the world when we have something else that’s consuming us, the way time passes (or doesn’t) when we are preoccupied, the way we can be, as they say, of the world but not in it.
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.
I was totally surprised when I started evaluating progress on my official 2016 writing /poetry goals. According to my mood related to writing in 2016, I believed I’d failed every goal I’d set. Turns out, I totally nailed it.
The Fast Company article says creative folks need three kinds of creative circles — a scene, a network and a community. No matter how you label your support system, I believe in what he has to say. I do think relationships balance out the solitary, internal work we’re called to do.
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.
When a poet can pull off intimacy and distance at once, the poems stand out as something truly remarkable. Sad Math by Sarah Freligh is full of poems like that. As Sandra Meek says in a blurb at the book’s beginning, these poems are “nervy and frank, hilarious and heartbreaking.”