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Paz Effect
Reading Octavio Paz’s poems challenges me. He goes deep and wide, mythic and intense. His work silences and moves me, but if I keep him close I will perhaps learn to write with courage. His female figures are stunning, earthy and unabashedly eternal. As I read though, I cannot find my own words. I close…
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Contagious Poetry
Binge reading Edward Hirsch’s books about poetry, in How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, I found the origin of his introduction to poetry. As a boy he was, on a rainy day, looking for something to read and found in one of his grandfather’s books a poem, handwritten and unattributed. Seems…
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“Ink Blot”
One of the many writing groups I attend is a bunch of free-writing fools, as we often call ourselves, though I don’t know that we have ever formally accepted that label. A lot of what we do is happy or not-so happy foolishness, freedom to let the words splatter onto the page and know that…
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Reading at Random
Every week I shop the new-book shelf at the library, almost always finding half a dozen books that interest me. Occasionally, I make myself branch out from my preferred mystery-as-escape selections. I start at the biography section and I check to see if there is new poetry. This week I found a biography of Sylvia…
Karen Douglass, Author 