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Ephemerals pt. 4 (awe and otters)
This is the last entry in my “ephemerals” journaling, since early spring is fading in Virginia–where I’ve returned after the Alaska trip and a terrific residency at Storyknife. Quick note toward the future: I’m teaching a three-hour workshop, “Poetry from the Underworld,” via Poet Camp on June 28th, and registration is now open. I promise…
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Ephemerals pt. 2 (spirals, drafts, wildflowers)
I’m heading to Alaska shortly. During my residency, blogging and social media will be low priority, but my Storyknife cohort will give a virtual reading on April 24th, 6 pm Alaska Time–I’m planning to share new work with you, if you can make it. Look at the Storyknife website closer to the date for a…
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Spring ephemerals
March 23, 2026 This morning I took my first solitary ramble of the new season in the woods behind campus, a favorite walk, especially in spring. The ridges folding steeply down to the Maury River are full of spring wildflowers: this early I found lots of twinleaf and spring beauties (a.k.a. miner’s lettuce, good to…
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Square coats: AWP & Shenandoah
Performances ahead: Now filing out of the auditorium for a while: AWP and Shenandoah. A friend of mine, describing a thorny family situation amid the hubbub of AWP’s Book Fair, tried to say, “I shouldn’t use scare quotes.” The phrase came out “square coats.” Square old me, standing there in my favorite velvet blazer–I hadn’t…
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Winter bongos
Yesterday I drafted this blog from inside a very cold bongo drum. High winds rippled and banged our metal roof riotously: “Thumbing / the tin roof like a smoker who / cannot get the house to stay alight,” I wrote in Mycocosmic, in a poem about perimenopausal sleeplessness. Even though hot flashes are rare now,…
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Arthur Sze’s mushrooms
I planned to get my third novel started this January, and I have. I wasn’t far in, though, before my brain started playing hooky. Psst, Lesley, I have a poem idea for you. Poetry always seems to prefer a sidewise approach, when I’m looking the other way. There’s nothing to do but obey. Arthur Sze’s…
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At the lip of the cave
It may be hibernation season, but I can feel the literary world heating up again–professors building syllabi, organizational emails flying. I’m participating in some of that planning energy toward two local events in the next month: “Writing from the Underworld” at Rockbridge Regional Library branch three blocks from me (1/29, 5:30-7:00, a short reading followed…
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2025 in reading (playing Yesterday)
My eldest child embroidered their way through this hard year, so for Christmas they gave me some of my favorite poetic lines on a little panel of violet cloth. They’re from Dickinson’s “Let Us play Yesterday.” “The o’s kill me,” Madeleine remarked about the difficulty of embroidering round letters. This detail seems poetic in its…
