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And the winner of the Big Poetry Giveaway is…
Poet and blogger Joseph Harker! I’ve never met him but just looked him up and his last post for NaPoWriMo, “Adam and Steve,” is pretty great. Nice list of favorite poets, too. I’ll be sending him my latest, The Receptionist and Other Tales, and Feral by Janet McAdams. Thanks to Susan Rich for organizing this and to everyone who…
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The exquisite hush I require, being a sensitive artist
“So how’s it going at your writer’s resort?” my son keeps asking, and you should definitely hear pre-teen sarcasm in those italics. I packed skepticism in my suitcase, actually, nested in there with books I didn’t use and tea I would brew in enormous quantities. What’s so special about writing over there instead of at…
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Pretty books, messy drafts
“No,” she said (I’m paraphrasing), “you have to post your daily poem. That’s how you learn to stop worrying about what other people think. It frees you.” Luisa Igloria, who gave a great reading here a few days ago, has published a poem a day at Dave Bonta’s Via Negativa since November 20th, 2010, so…
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Poets do it for free
You thought I meant poetry readings, I’m sure, and yes, we will talk dirty to you in bookstores, classrooms, cafés, and other marginal spaces, for little or no compensation. But at the moment I’m referring to another kind of freebie. The wheel of the year has turned and it’s time to get Feral for National Poetry…
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Career Suicide
I’m risk-averse, at least financially. My mother felt trapped in a bad marriage by her lack of education and her sense that she couldn’t earn a decent living. I remember thinking as a child: come hell or high water, I WILL have my own salary, health insurance, retirement fund. I will never have to sit…
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The loveliest, the smartest, the most full of dinosaur droppings
For Wednesday, my “Poetry and Community” students are required to judge the U.S. inaugural poems from Frost to Blanco: which is best and why. “Define best however you like,” I told them: most beautiful? politically galvanizing? original? traditional? appropriate to a formal ceremony with a gigantic audience? inappropriate yet for that reason surprising and memorable?…
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Reading, watching, listening after the non-apocalypse
Inauguration, schminauguration—what we’re all truly excited about is HEARING RICHARD BLANCO’S POEM. And then digging up the two other poems rejected by the president’s staffers (the New York Times says Blanco offered them three), and blogging about how those dumb politicos eschewed the more risky, exciting options. Anyway, that’s what I’ll be listening to this…
LESLEY WHEELER 