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NEW LISTING
Consider them very carefullyfor you will have only this chanceand you don’t want to addthose which ought not be includedor be forever burdened by thoseyou overlooked or misassumedyou wanted to retain.When you are quite certainyou are finished, that your listis exactly as you wish it,that all your dislikes and regretsare properly delineated, thenwalk slowly to…
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WRITING MEMORY
It is well past time I wrote a poem about the great joys of my childhood, for memory should bubble up like lava through the crust of time, they should rain in flashes as so much matter dropping into the atmosphere in their ultimate light show. This isn’t going to happen, of course, whether because…
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FUTURE HISTORY
The history of modern literature, at least to those who purport to create it, is inextricably tied up with technology. The quill and inkwell ceded only reluctantly to the fountain pen and ballpoint. Foolscap was affixed to corkboard by countless pushpins, but one wasn’t a teal writer until one stuck in the sole of your…
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UNDER THE WEIGHT
My shelves grow heavy with volumes of words I wish I had written, neatly bound up in books that stare at me, at once bidding me welcome and challenging me to enter. One shelf is set aside for books of pages, blank, on which I have written each day now for three and a half…
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CACOPHONY OF SILENCE
There is one thing a poet hates more than a page that refuses to be filled – it is coming across words that profess or are sworn to silence. I had a pen I truly loved until it announced early one morning it was taking a vow of iambic celibacy. Poems once pregnant with possibility…
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AN INKLING
Writing is an art form that very many never see but the unseeing of the work is what elevates it to art. This is what you often hear from the unpublished, or even from the denizens of small press purgatory, the one the Vatican will never acknowledge, for the poets corner of heaven is so…
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HAVING WRIT, MOVED ON
She says she sees the whole book in her head before she kills it putting pen to paper. It is there, she says where it dies immovable on the page. I invite the words onto the page as well and hope they take a life of their own expressing my intentions if not my thoughts…
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AN INKLING
He says he has discovered that the best way for him to write is to ignore the pen totally, to just let it lie on the desk doing nothing. It should be in close proximity to paper, for pens need that to complete their existence or at least to give them purpose to go…
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A SCREAM
Then there are the days when extracting words feels like extracting teeth, and there is no Novocaine for either my pen or me. If you hear a scream, just ignore it please, it is only the agony of a poem’s death throes.
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THE SAD LIFE OF THE WRITER
She says, “you suffer from scriptor interruptus, which makes her laugh, and she says you have to have a thought to be interrupted and we both know it has been a long while since you’ve been there, but keep holding the pen, you never know what might come out.”
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an old writer and his words 