I have finally decided on what my new poetry manuscript is—or, I’ve almost decided. Poems about my childhood on a farm, about the farm and about the trees on the farm, about the people and animals there, and (especially) about my parents up to and including their deaths. It’s been an exhausting though rewarding journey, […]
For me, the fun part is just being at home and writing in my sweatpants. And then being like, “I wrote a poem and I like it.” There’s nothing that compares to that. Nothing. Not The New Yorker, not The New York Times. I feel like that’s something that sometimes gets lost in our culture, where everything’s about building […]
Believe it or not, I am just about to go on “vacation.” Usually my vacations are writing retreats. This is decidedly not. The hubby has arranged for us to see the Grand Canyon — something I have wanted to do all my life (probably since reading Brighty of the Grand Canyon, by Marguerite Henry). I […]
I’ve been reading a friend’s poems, trying to be helpful, and one question that has come up is how to represent dialogue in poems. So I’ve been scouring my books for examples, and I’m a little surprised to see it done so infrequently. My advice: you can set the speech in italics, or you can […]