Tag: poetry
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Magma‘s “Mistakes Poets Make”.
My laptop is in the shop yet again. Possibly this was the last gasp of the beleaguered motherboard — I feel its pain, deeply — so I am not only without a draft this week — which is fine, because when I include the dragonfly challenge poem (a challenge I won, by the bye!), I’ve…
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Rainer Maria Rilke & Edward Snow.
In my mid-twenties, I picked up a hardcover poetry book from a sale table in Media Play. Anyone remember that store? Looking back now, it’s a minor miracle, that find, their book selections were so abysmal. The book: Uncollected Poems, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow (North Point Press, 1996). I had read…
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Poems from the Women’s Movement: The Reading.
Wednesday night I went to a reading at Amherst College to celebrate the publication of the new Library of America anthology, Poems from the Women’s Movement, edited by Honor Moore. Quite a contingent of women collaborated to bring this event off, and what an electric evening it was! Not only was Honor Moore in attendance…
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The Art of Syntax for the Ordinary Genius.
It is as I feared: Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, by Kim Addonizio, while a friendly and frank-talking book, is really a book for beginners. Addonizio is tremendously likable, and the self-deprecating manner in which she presents her own early drafts is appealing, but if you’ve been a practicing poet for some…
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Draft of the Week, #6.
As the blog nears its two-year mark, it seemed to me to need a small makeover — you might not have even noticed. I chose a design that offers a similar color scheme, fonts, and I kept my header photo of the Potholes (tho’ maybe I’ll begin updating the Potholes picture as the seasons change),…
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Autumn Cold/s.
Now I know the summer is well & truly over: The Gauthier household is besieged by its first illness since Aidan was born. Vincent is the only one not suffering at the moment, but he woke with a sore throat, so I expect he’s getting it, too. Aidan is thoroughly miserable, barely sleeping, making it…
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The Secret Draft.
Last week I met with the rest of the Collected Poets Series (CPS) board to begin planning the 2010 readings. After we’d been at it for about 3 hours, Lance showed up with the boys to check in, and asked if we’d seen the “dragonfly tornado” across the street. Naturally, we poet/shut-ins had noticed nothing…
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Fun with Wordle.
I copied my manuscript in its current full-length entirety into that wondrous website for word-lovers and seekers of writing prompts, Wordle, and this is what resulted. I have to say, I’m surprised that “like” is so prevalent. I have an aversion to similes — I expected “boy” to be the word that really popped out. …
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She Walks into the Sea, by Patricia Clark.
Rounding out the top three po-biz talking points, numbers one & two being “Nobody reads poetry anymore”, and “Nobody buys poetry books”, is, and I paraphrase, “The poetry world is a teeny-tiny incestuous drop in the tumultuous literary ocean.” But the amazing fact is that’s it’s not so small you can’t make halleluiah discoveries every…
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And on the Fifth Week, She Revised.
In keeping with the aura of the arbitrary that I like to foster around here, I’ve decided that every fifth week will be an off-week for my Draft of the Week series, so that I may use that time to revise the poems I’ve written in the previous four weeks. I’d rather use that time…
Marie Gauthier 