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Warning
A candle burns away its life / in a safe sconce, a gentle light / But shouldn’t I be terrified of fire, seeing the bleak, black ruins / of a close-by apartment house / floodlit in the night? “Warning, / These Walls May Fall.” // Even the endless penetration of light/ in facing mirrors comes…
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Beware of Poetry?
Here I am, a little late in the day, but finally capable of saying something useful. I spent two fine hours this morning at a poetry workshop hosted by Anythink Wright Farms, one of the Adams County, Colorado libraries. I’ve studied poetry for a long time, so why did I need more? For one thing,…
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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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Talk, Talk, Talk
Lately, it seems I talk a lot. Possibly, more than is helpful. On Sunday I talked to a group of people about poetry. They were all adults (Kids and poetry startle me, like giving them too much sugar, so they get squirrely). We talked about the essential concerns I see in writing poems. Like getting…
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Relearning Poetry
Torn, I stood in the bookstore with Thomas C. Foster’s new book, How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse. It wasn’t the price that slowed me down. It was that word professor, someone I don’t want to be if by this he means one who intellectualizes poetry. Fortunately,…
Karen Douglass, Author 