Its been years since I last went to a writer's retreat. Squaw Valley came at just the right time offering me a healing I'd been long in need of. There's a unique community offered by artists gathered together all struggling to write the next thing and to keep working. That creative energy feeds me like …
BBQ Ribs For the Dead (on Writing, Loneliness and Repurposing Poems)
In two days time, there will be an office memorial for a coworker who died the weekend of my birthday. I came back from my personal 3 day weekend and a secretary passed my desk, stopped and told me how over the weekend Linda had died suddenly. I'd worked with her about seven years and …
Continue reading "BBQ Ribs For the Dead (on Writing, Loneliness and Repurposing Poems)"
How Do You Write Poems?
SPOILER: I don't. They write me. I woke up in time to catch CBS Sunday Morning and the moment it was over, I clicked off the television, already annoyed by the Sunday morning crew newscast, and started getting myself dressed and my stuff together. Four notebooks, some print outs of articles and Other People's Poetry …
The Spook By The Door (Who Wouldn’t Sit Still)
If you use a Yoruba chant to open a public event, welcoming the ancestors to join and be welcome in the proceedings, how do you close the ceremony and tell the ancestors, spirits-- thanks for coming! shows over now, yawl can go back to the far reaches of heaven or wherever... I ask because a …
Continue reading "The Spook By The Door (Who Wouldn’t Sit Still)"
Who Gave You Permission
The reading finished before 9:30. I left the bookstore and crossed the street. At the bus stop on the bench was a woman, whom I know, who bought a book off me but an hour before, whose house I've visited, and whose name I could not recall. Even now, thinking of that night last week, …
The Dirty Rat 