Tag Archives: Writing

Twitter has destroyed my writing… (Sommer Browning)

“Twitter has destroyed my writing, but not as much as interacting with people has. Interacting with people has destroyed my writing, but not as much as being in love has. Being in love has really destroyed my writing, but not … Continue reading

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NaPoWriMo 10.12 – “Titanic Analogy”

"Titanic Analogy" I wake angry, fists filled with dream music. I want no more white- knuckled wanting. I wonder at faded notes on my palm, meaning forgotten: "titanic analogy" and the first name of her last lover, faded ‘ but … Continue reading

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on Zadie Smith and “Ideological Inconsistency” (Michael Wood)

‘Changing My Mind is a very good title for a collection of essays, a genre in which one is supposed to be trying things out or trying things on. But the intimation is not as simple as it seems. “I’ve … Continue reading

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NaPoWriMo 10.10 – “Consuming”

“Consuming” You must split the melon to taste it, scatter spit the seeds. How else can we know what the flesh means? How else can the worms verb the rind and with their rinding rot? Call this consummate order. We … Continue reading

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Appalachian Flood (Cindy Goff)

Over at Harriet, Jeffrey McDaniel brings needed attention to the poetry of Cindy Goff. He highlights a fantastic, tiny poem that I share here in full: “Child Molestation” I remember nothing from eight to ten except a sensation like someone … Continue reading

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NaPoWriMo 10.9 – “What”

        What I Saw Two bloody palms ballooned against the cobwebbed glass leaking a mist almost too fine to see         What I Heard The keening of a knife whistling low and slow along the strop. The rattling of my … Continue reading

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National Poetry Month (2010)

April is National Poetry Month. Once again, my wiry but durable compatriot Jared and I will be embarking on a “poem-a-day” writing binge for the month—aka NaPoWriMo10. This time around we’ll be kicking it old school, blogging the poems on … Continue reading

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(Abecedarium) H

We’re mostly hydrogen which means we’re mostly empty space. A scale model of a hydrogen atom with a 1-inch thick nucleus would enclose an almost completely empty sphere with a diameter of more than a mile. A scale model of … Continue reading

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Go Read: The Storialist

The Storialist features a new poem each work day inspired by (and linking to) a photograph or work of art found on the web. Good idea and some great poems. Check it out.

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(Abecedarium) G

Imagine the heart as a great spinning cylindrical habitat catapulting through deep space, home world forgotten, destination never known. The people living inside don’t feel as if they’re clinging to the thinnest skin when they walk. They can’t dig deep … Continue reading

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on the Accusatory “You” (Alice Fulton)

“detective or mystery convention is of course the group exposition scene at the end, in which the detective tells a gathered group, often including the culprit, what happened. If addressed to the criminal, it’s in the second person, informing the … Continue reading

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on Noise, Interference, and Handwriting (Marjorie Perloff)

“…noise is not only incidental, but essential to communication. … If, for example, a letter is written in careless or illegible script, there is interference in the reading process, which is to say that noise slows down communication.” –Marjorie Perloff … Continue reading

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(Abcedarium) A

I’ve been angry as long as I can remember. Angry at my fathers– biological, adopted, and step– for not being there and for being there. Angry at my mother for foisting those fathers on me and for having me in … Continue reading

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Blogs, Forms, and Abecedariums

As a quick glance over this blog (or Ruminate) will make clear, I’ve yet to figure out the forms that are my own best fit for blog writing. I feel intuitively that there’s an undiscovered, Platonic form out there in … Continue reading

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My Father, Burning

My father lifted me from my bed and carried me through the smoke. I remember the smell of a campfire, a burn barrel, burning hair. I could smell the faded scent of my father’s cologne, and feel how solid he … Continue reading

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“The New Math of Poetry” Does Not Compute

[CC licensed image by draggin]  Despite suffering from a lack of focus (or an essential pointlessness… take your pick), false analogies, and that old-man odor and monochromatic hue that comes with too much time inside the “Golden Age” fallacy, David … Continue reading

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On David Foster Wallace’s Birthday

[CC licensed image by darkpatator] Eighteen months ago– a day after his suicide– I packed up every David Foster Wallace authored book, every journal, magazine, and photocopied piece of ephemera he appeared in, and everything else I could find with … Continue reading

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Fiction, Entrapment, Loneliness (David Foster Wallace)

“You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), … Continue reading

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RIP: Lucille Clifton

I met Lucille Clifton in 1990 at a reading I attended with my future wife/mother-of-my-children/ex-wife and a good friend I’d grown up with who was still smarting from the arm twisting I’d given him while convincing him to come along. … Continue reading

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OUCH

I know this comment was a compliment… yet it illustrates the fundamental divide in the person I once was (and want to be again) and the person I’ve become, despite my efforts. No poetry.

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