Tag: MFA
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* Kay Ryan chills on the friday influence
Say Uncle – Kay Ryan Every day you say, Just one more try. Then another irrecoverable day slips by. You will say ankle, you will say knuckle; why won’t you why won’t you say uncle? *** This week on the Influence: Kay Ryan. When I go back to this poem, I’m always taken in by the speed of…
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* anagram haiku
I recently finished filling up a notebook. Before shutting it away for a year or more, I thought I would share a few small things from it. These short lyrics arrived out of something I call anagram haiku. Please enjoy and perhaps try a few yourself. *** the gods run like dogs through our lives…
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* Williams’ other plum poem & the friday influence
To a poor old woman – William Carlos Williams munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out…
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* post-birthday-post (whoa.)
So. Totally turned 30 this weekend. Among the gifts my thoughtful amazing lady showered me with was a copy of Florence + The Machine’s “Ceremonials”. We drove home from the Oregon coast during a small rainstorm, going around turns lined with green, under a gray sky, with this woman’s amazing voice raising hell up to…
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* cinquain tributes
Byron Believed You could make a River from a writhing, Overturned woman, her husband Nearby. *** Every once in a while I write something I call a cinquain tribute, a cinquain in which the last name of a poet is snuck in via acrostic – the first letter of each line. I enjoy these because…
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* Stanley Kunitz & the friday influence
Touch Me – Stanley Kunitz Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that’s late, it is my song that’s flown. Outdoors all…
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* a little bit on process
Just finished a batch of 200+ poems and am sorting through them with the help of my editor/first reader/manager/lady in order to see if there’s a book in there. My process is simply to fill up a journal (those sleek/cliche Moleskines) and leave that journal alone for at least a year. When I come back…
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* Louise Bogan, an update & the friday influence
Roman Fountain – Louise Bogan Up from the bronze, I saw Water without a flaw Rush to its rest in air, Reach to its rest, and fall. Bronze of the blackest shade, An element man-made, Shaping upright the bare Clear gouts of water in air. O, as with arm and hammer, Still it is good…
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* John Ashbery, the pit & the friday influence
Uptick – John Ashbery We were sitting there, and I made a joke about how it doesn’t dovetail: time, one minute running out faster than the one in front it catches up to. That way, I said, there can be no waste. Waste is virtually eliminated. To come back for a few hours to…
The Friday Influence 