Search
-
April 26, 2014
The Most Important Skill
Someone asks me what’s the most important skill a poet can have and I start to say the power of observation. The world awaits us with all sorts of small truths that can’t easily be seen. When I lose ...
-
April 23, 2014
More Revision
A friend confesses that he could spend the rest of his life revising a handful of the same poems. One change leads to another. It’s like a glassblower unsure whether to make a swan or a squirrel, the ...
-
April 21, 2014
Devoured
Some days I want to tear chunks off the alphabet, chop up syllables, sink my teeth into the gristle of grammar. I discovered a ferruginous hawk up a tree in my backyard the other day with the peeled pink ...
-
October 31, 2015
The Thing That Terrifies Me the Most About Writing
It came out of me the in a journal entry the other day, a fear I know has been swimming around inside for years now, but one that I never fully articulated, or maybe even fully acknowledged, until it ...
-
October 28, 2015
How Spending Time with Your Influences Helps Overcome Creative Blocks
It happens to everyone: Everything is humming along nicely with a project and then, bam! You have no idea where to go next. The words aren’t coming anymore, the ideas have stalled, and your confidence ...
-
September 28, 2014
On Janus
Sonnet IVNew yeare forth looking out of Janus gate,Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight:And bidding th’old Adieu, his passed dateBids all old thoughts to die in dumpish sprightAnd calling forth ...
-
September 26, 2014
On Pseudonyms: Q&A with Amanda Earl
On pseudonyms a.k.a. aliases a.k.a. handles a.k.a. avatars a.k.a. monikers a.k.a. sobriquets ak.a. epithets a.k.a. pen names a.k.a. nicknames a.k.a. noms de guerres a.k.a. anon.:Q&A with Amanda Earl, ...
-
August 25, 2016
On Writing, with Danila Botha
August 25, 2016 - We're excited to introduce our September 2016 writer-in-residence, Danila Botha, author of For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known (Tightrope Books). Known for crafting ...
-
May 26, 2016
Rhubarb Crisp
By some trick of heredity, or upbringing, or brain chemistry, my greatest talent lies in finding the negative in what should be uniformly positive experiences. I'm generally on the hunt, when presented ...
-
September 14, 2014
On the Idea of a Secret (Part 1)
“The idea of a secret that will be revealed always results in one of two scenarios: death and destruction, or self-discovery and recovery beyond our wildest dreams of unification. And in the greatest ...