RR #3

"We are all haunted by images, both light and dark. ... That partly explains why they're so powerful, why we respond to them in a much more visceral way than we do to generalized abstractions."

"Put simply, though, an image in poetry is language that calls up a physical sensation, appealing to us at the level of any of our five senses. Images may be 'literal': the red kitchen chair in a dim corner of the room; ... Or they may be 'figurative', departing from the actual and stating or implying a comparison: the chair, red and shiny as fingernail polish."

"Magic. That's what an image should do, produce a bit of magic, a reality so real it is 'like being alive twice.'"

"Poets need to keep all five senses - and possibly a few more - on the continual alert, ready to translate the world through their bodies, to reinvent it in language. Images are a kind of energy, moving from outside to inside and back, over and over, a continual exchange."

"Images are the rendering of your bodily experience in the world; without them, your poems are going to risk being vague and imprecise, and they will fail to convey much to a reader."

RR #2

"They arrange their thoughts in lines without much sense of why they are doing so, beyond the hope that if what they write 'looks' like a poem, it will mysteriously become one."

"You'll need to get a feel for the line, for what it does when it is very short, very long, and every place in between; you'll need to be able to test its weight and heft according to the rhythms of the language you've strung along it; and you'll want to use it to create tension or relaxation, to emphasize words, to speed up or slow down your reader's eye, to fulfill or thwart expectations."

"...it's especially important to pay attention to the tools we do have, to become aware of the sounds of language and begin to work with them - both in your choice of words, and how you organize those words into lines that are meaningful - not only in what they say, but how they say it."

"The rhythms of certain lines also swerve to intensify the contrasts in the poem."

"We're made uncomfortable when words that usually go together are suddenly severed from each other, like adjectives and nouns ... articles and nouns ... when even verbs are split up."

RR #1

"There is a world inside each of us that we know better than anything else, and a world outside of us that calls for our attention - the world of our families, our communities, our history. Our subject matter is always with us, right here, at the tips of our fingers, at the edge of each passing thought."

"... unless we're able to transform the raw material of our experiences into language that reaches beyond the self-involvement of that person standing at the window, so that what we know becomes shared knowledge, part of who we are as individuals, a culture, a species."

"These and other poets began with the simple idea that what they saw and experienced was important to record, and that the modest facts of their lives, what they knew within the small confines of their limited, personal worlds, could contain the enduring facts and truths of the larger world."

"The poet has mixed the ordinary with the fantastic to convince us that the dead, indeed, act this way. At the end of the poem, the dead merge with the memory of the living - parents or relatives who 'stayed up / drinking all night in the kitchen.'"

"If you have a life full of drama, then of course that will be your material. But don't wait for something to happen before you begin to write; pay attention to the world around you, right now. That's what poets do."

Mowed Hair

One more millimeter one more day

birthed, expelled, pushed outward.

The stem of brown color rising,

sliced, cut short and stifled.

A fatal fate for its green haired friend,

waiting just outside.

The Whir of whooshing blades pass through,

to chop it at mid height.

The Cycle

Winter starts this part,

with its pure yet featureless face.

Harsh Winds. Chill Bones.

Quiet Emptiness

Spring-time dazzles and shines,

it’s odors caress the nose.

Sweet Lilacs. Dancing Bees.

A sight desired to behold

Summer is like a still life,

of the Spring-time’s flashy growth

Warm Rains. Sunny Shores.

Content with nothing more

Fall is not the end,

but a maturation through lost time.

Vivid Colors. Clear Skies.

A realization of is splendor

Winter longs to come back in…

But Spring has taken hold

I pray winter not return