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Attendez Vous!
Please, if you go to a poetry reading, pay attention to the poets. This is not difficult when the readers are well known and there is no open mic. However, the open mic can challenge your parents’ kindest intentions to teach you manners. I am put off and put out by self-centered attendees who blatantly show no interest…
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Makeup for TV
Writing is not, I repeat not, a solitary process. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I hang out with a lot of other writers, many of them I meet over coffee or in critiques or for free writing. I love these personal and up close meetings, especially in our high-tech world were too often we…
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I Believe
Recently I finished participating in a memoir group. For each of five weeks we wrote on an assigned topic such as family, work, etc. The final assignment was to write about values, spirituality, or religion. I won’t bore you with my internal meanderings on this topic, but–you knew this was coming–that assignment led me to…
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Negative Space
One of the poets in our local critique group recently brought a poem that dealt with the space that art tries to occupy. It’s a hard concept to grasp, but we talked for quite a while about the possibility, and I settled on the idea of negative space in visual art. Interestingly, a novel that I…
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Tuesday is Tip Day for Poets
Starting right now, this minute, January 22, 2013, 7:09 MST, I am available for commentary on poems and answers to craft questions. Here’s how it works: you, the poet or reader, sends a specific question about poetry to kvdbooks@facebook.com. You give me written permission to post your poem/question/comment on a public site and to respond…
Karen Douglass, Author 