Poetry

Rejection Letter

if you have a firm policy, you should word it more clearly than was the case here.

Notes on A Guest Poet

The guest poet, a Ukrainian, speaks from his throat and off the roof of his mouth, his words jumping off the foam of his waves.

Politics and Poetry

We who write political poetry can easily fall into the hackneyed and pustulous, foully cute, start to sound like a militant version of Hallmark Greeting Cards.

A Premise for Poetic Appreciation

All poets

speak to and from the same soul.

The Deserted Heartland

The culture that produced Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, and others is dying.

Self Pity and Dumb Luck

Thank you Sam and Bert for the gifts you gave me and the other OC poets this week.

Iambic Pentameter

I dare say that I like it far more when I write it to match the natural candences of language than when I force it to the academicized meter.

Bouts Râmes

The first bout is up!

What is Going into the Notebooks

I've been writing a lot of poetry lately, a few concentrated lines taking the place of the prose that I can turn out page after page.

Bouts Râmes Anyone?

The play went like this: someone made a list of rhymes and presented them to the others. These had a period of time to create a poem using those rhymes.

Leadership

But of a good leader,
When his work is done,
His aim fulfilled,
They will all say:
"We did this ourselves."

Refrigerator Magnets

"I chant red thousand" is a particularly memorable line that is still in search of a poem.

The Sun is Crying

It's a nice illustration of the natural poet we have buried in ourselves and the virtue of listening to small children.

PATW
For what it is worth, I am now represented in Poets against the War....