I loved history in school – it seemed an endlessly wonderful story of All These People doing All These Interesting Things! My sophomore year in high school, however, Dave Reedy was my teacher. Mr. Reedy was (IS) a hippie who was caustic about the government, outspoken about “History Is Written By The Winner” and made […]
Whew. Thankfully, we made it! November has been a CHALLENGING month, but here we are, at the finish line of the final Friday, well-rested (in theory), full of leftovers (hopefully) and ready to celebrate the season with some more poetry. Our theme this month was the last of our hindsight/foresight poems where we were meant […]
HAPPY OCTOBER’S END! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s the time of vivid skies and shaded leaves and the sharpest fading of the light, leading to long-blooming mornings and gray blue twilight that snuffs out sharply into deepest dark. It’s the time of low fogs and high winds and swirling leaves caught […]
Oh, September. So much has weighed so heavily this month that the word ‘ponderous,’ which was intended as a sort of light-hearted take on feeling dragged low by the end of summertime has a much, much greater weight to it now. There’s much, as always, for which to be grateful – for today, the air […]
Last week, poet Carol V. so loved the Bach invention poem I found that she used a stanza of it for a golden shovel. That seemed as good a reason as any to revisit the golden shovel form from 2017 for this month’s hindsight challenge, and remember the particular challenges of that form. Our task […]
Check in: Welcome, Poetry Peeps! It’s nearly August, and a lot has happened this last month! Laura has requested that with this post we update each other, so I’m pleased to share that I’ve just gotten to vote on my favorite voice-over artist for SERENA SAYS, my middle grade book coming out in November, and […]
Shhh. Listen to the crunch of leaves underfoot. Listen to the susurrus of leaves dancing with the wind. Hear the shrieking cries of… is that a jay? or some other kind of corvid? It’s cool in here – and despite the fact that dragonfly was the size of a small VW – it’s safe. Here […]
Welcome to Poetry Friday in December! Gratitude is the theme the Poetry Sisters chose this month for our original poems. It’s kind of a low-key challenge for those of us who are in the teeth of exams and end-of-year work emergencies, or who, like me, are preparing for the slog of holiday concerts and staying […]
Wow, December pounced like a crouching cat; one moment invisible, the next, a lightning fast blur, possibly with claws. We were not prepared. Fortunately, this month, the Poetry Seven are celebrating with a list poem. I fell in love with list poems in grad school, where I was introduced to the work of Christopher Smart, […]
Another month (was January sixteen years long, or was that just me???), another poetic endeavor with the Seven Sisters! This month we’re visiting Moscow (brrr, in spirit only, it’s far too chilly to venture that direction these days) to stride the wide boulevards surrounding this lovely bit of Moscow called by Muscovites “Vysotniye Zdaniye,” or […]