Karen Douglass, Author

Karen Douglass, Author: Prose & Poetry

Category: Uncategorized

  • Failure Is a Must

    I spent a precious hour yesterday leafing through lousy drafts–words, sentences and paragraphs that strained and grimaced, that were missing vital organs–the sounds, images, energy and depth of good writing. I was looking for something good to offer the world, as Lewis Hyde says, to move the gift along. It was one of those times…

  • Meditations on an Egg

    1. Jeweled Fabergé eggs did not save the Russian czar. 2. In Europe eggs are not washed nor refrigerated, and seldom does anyone get sick from eating them. 3. A goose egg is good for the goose and the gander, less so for the scoreboard or your head. 4. An egg fits into the human…

  • Writer, Step Aside

    Remember when Alfred Hitchcock glided across the TV screen to the sound of Charles Gounod‘s Funeral March of a Marionette? All we saw was Alfred’s shadow. He bid us “Good evening,” and got out of the way to let the story unfold. This approach works for most writers, not so much for musicians or dancers,…

  • Larry’s Question

    Last week I read at West Side Books in Denver. The poems were mostly from RED GODDESS POEMS, including one that tells a story about the shape shifting abilities of the ban filid, mythical women with the power to change their appearance–without mascara or blush. The women my poem “The Warriors” have a disagreement that…

  • Where Do You Write?

    In Poets & Writers March/April 2014 I read a good essay in the “Where We Write” section and it led to this reflection on where I write. As someone who has moved around a lot, I don’t have the regional attachment that essayist Mary Stewart Atwell has to her Virginia origins. So where do I…