Category: writing prompts
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writing prompt: predictive text
Back to teaching full time this week. Been exciting and inspiring, while at the same time very real. What I mean is that the more I teach, the more I feel myself be more myself. And it’s not a thing I can summon or call forth. The space held in shared open questioning and conversation […]
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writing prompt: found sonnet
This week’s writing prompt has me sharing something I wrote during my experience teaching in my first winter residency for the Solstice low-residency MFA program at Pine Manor College. Along with teaching a craft course on poetic authority and hybrid forms and participating in a faculty reading, I also had the privilege of leading a […]
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writing prompt: Stafford’s four elements of daily writing practice
For this week’s writing prompt, I’m revisiting my time presenting at and attending the Oregon Poetry Association conference in September. While I have devised mine own daily writing habits over the years, it was at this conference where I learned the practices of one of my go to poets, William Stafford. Stafford’s son, Kim Stafford, […]
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writing prompt: shape tracing
This week I’m introducing a new type of post focused on writing prompts! These will come in part out of my teaching background and will also be informed by work I’m currently exploring. This week’s poem, “have I mattered to my / phone…” in particular involves a visual component that doesn’t travel well to Instagram. […]
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lyrical alignment: Richard Rodriguez
This week’s lyrical alignment is drawn from an interview with writer Richard Rodriguez conducted by Hector A. Torres for the book Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers (University of New Mexico Press). I came across the passage below from a journal entry during my third year doing the PhD. I remember being struck by […]
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lyrical alignment: The Book of Unknown Americans
I haven’t shared one of my lyrical alignments in a while, so I’m excited to share this one. I’ve also gone ahead and created a new category for them on the side there, so one click can take you to my collective formal experimentations across the years. This week’s lyrical alignment comes from Cristina Henríquez’s […]
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a colorful lyrical alignment
This week’s post features a lyrical alignment of an excerpt from Victoria Finlay’s book Color: A Natural History of the Palette. This is the kind of nonfiction book that tries to break down information through story and personal recollections. Finlay writes of her travels to the places where particular colors are made and goes into the details […]
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gabriel garcia marquez: a lyrical alignment
This week’s poem is a lyrical alignment from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s prologue to his short story collection Strange Pilgrims. In his prologue – entitled “Why Twelve, Why Stories, Why Pilgrims” – Marquez details the journey of his stories, how some have traveled with him for years and others arrived unexpected. I remember marveling at the […]
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another bolaño lyrical alignment
Here’s another lyrical alignment from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. I came across this paragraph “re-aligned” in some old notes from 2008. The scene is of the enigmatic Ulises character described via another character’s story of him. I often describe Bolaño as a poet’s poet. His writing, like that of Borges, is infused with signs of a […]
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william james: a lyrical alignment
So, earlier this week, THIS happened: I’m delighted to share the news of my having become married. 🙂 Those of you who’ve followed me on the Influence for a while may have caught me speaking about a previous divorce. I’m happy to have been keeping up this blog long enough to show that life has […]
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