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All About Poets #3
Diane Wakoski has long been one of my favorite poets. Initially, her book titles drew me in: The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems, Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch, Waiting for the King of Spain, Emerald City of Las Vegas. Who could resist? Certainly not a woman trying to find her own assertive…
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All About Poets #2
In the 1980s I taught composition and intro to literature at LSU-Shreveport (Louisiana), and of course, teaching meant the occasional academic conference, often an offshoot of Modern Language Association. The one in question here might have been at Texas Christian University, but the true location is mired deep in my faulty memory. What stands…
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This One’s for the Birds
The workshop at Columbine Poets of Colorado today featured poems in honor of The Year of the Bird. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a conservation measure prohibiting the “pursuit, hunt, take, capture, kill or sale” of migratory birds in the US. It has nothing but coincidence to do…
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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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Jake Adam York
Almost at the end of National Poetry Month, browsing a library display, I found Abide/Poems by Jake Adam York. York, now deceased, has been widely admired, especially by Colorado writers and readers. An associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver, he edited the journal Copper Nickel (http://copper-nickel.org/). Abide, says David Wojahn in his…
Karen Douglass, Author 