They say it’s the little things that matter. I couldn’t agree more! Recently, I was in an open mic Zoom session in which one of the readers read a poem that excluded every “the” possible, and several other small words like “an” and “a.” These are known as articles. Sometimes this pruning is done in the mistaken belief that to do so will make a piece feel more poem-like. (Though I don’t fully understand this reasoning.) Sometimes, it’s to cut … Read More »

Don’t get me wrong. Journals are lovely, and I have a drawer full. But there are other, and often better ideas for gift giving to a writer. If you have a writer stowed away in your attic, in a closet, or other suitably tight, dark place please consider some of the following ideas for this holiday season. And feel free to check out last year’s post on gifts for writers. Some gifts are timeless (like the gift of time) and … Read More »

So you’re zipping along – doing your thing – and below the radar one, or more, of your traditionally published books goes silently out of print. Often, you’re not told this by the publisher – you just stumble upon the fact when a teacher or school reports that they can’t get books. When a book goes out of print. it always hurts – it’s a death in the family. You’ve spent a significant portion of your life living with it, … Read More »

One, and done should not be the case for many poems. Why waste such a wealthy resource as a poem by only publishing it once in its entirety, or reprinting it whole? The truth is, like any good non-fiction writer who mines their research and articles for possible other perspectives on the material—poets can do the same. If you’ve got a longer poem, is it possible to pull out bits and pieces of it for a micro-poem? Can you reword … Read More »

Birds can imprint on voices before they are hatched. And studies confirm that we humans hear sounds before we are born—our mother’s heartbeats, intestinal sounds, music, and the rise and fall of spoken language. Further, researchers have found that fetuses who are spoken to in a variety of pitches have an increased interest in sounds, and the inflections in sound, after birth. Now, isn’t that what’s happening to us as poetry lovers when we hear a poem that just “feels … Read More »

I am only an occasional writer of haiku, but I adore the form. Studying it, I’ve found that there’s a lot we can learn from haiku which we can apply to all sorts of writing—in other verse forms or in prose. Now, I bet you’re thinking: brevity. Sure. That’s the most obvious aspect of haiku. And brevity is great to keep in mind when we’re writing anything. But there are other concepts from this verse form that we can use, … Read More »