Tag: revision
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* all’s misalliance with robert lowell
The more time you spend around words, the more they keep moving around. When I first read this week’s poem, “Epilogue” by Robert Lowell, I focused on the line: Yet why not say what happened? This line gave me permission and nerve at a time when I needed it. Reading the poem again years later, a…
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* sharing toys with Takuboku Ishikawa
Tanka are my sad toys. Takuboku Ishikawa Takuboku Ishikawa (1886 – 1912) said the above statement at the end of an essay, explaining how he approached the form with the intimacy of a diary. They were “sad” because he wrote them while unhappy – they were “toys” because they were useless to society. This outlook…
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* Onions & the friday influence
This week on the Influence: Onions! Seriously: in keeping with last week’s post, I have decided to share this poem of mine, “Onions”, which was also revised after publication. The original of this poem found a home at The Windward Review. It came out of a writing exercise where I wrote about something I hated.…
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* missing Corpus Christi
The above image is from the Sea Wall in my hometown of Corpus Christi Texas. It stretches up and down Ocean Drive, down past the Whataburger by the Bay, down into the palm-trees lining downtown. Go a little further and you’ll end up at the old site of the factory I used to work at.…
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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…
The Friday Influence 