It’s quite nice to be out here in one of Molly’s innovative “cottages,” listening to the sound of the wind, shrubberies brushing the outside walls, branches doing arabesques; feeling a bit like Dorothy just before she’s transported to Oz. There are some garden tools within sight—rakes, a shovel, hoes, crowded into a Wilson golf bag …
by Susan Kelly-DeWitt 1. I recently read two books, published twenty years apart, and both are works of genius. My first question to myself: How did I miss the one published in 1992, by an author whose work I have loved since the beginning? Somehow I did miss it— and then, after buying it, even …
I belong to a Poet’s Club (as we have chosen to call ourselves, and which I have written about here before.) Each time we meet, the host-poet hands out a writing assignment for the next time; our most recent assignment was a haibun. Haibun is traditionally a prose/haiku set having to do with travel. American …
In California the state fiscal crisis has resulted in the scheduled closure of seventy state parks (25% of the total number) by July of 2012. The majority of the parks scheduled for closure are in Northern California where the poet Katherine Hastings lives. Hastings, who runs a well-respected reading series in Santa Rosa, CA, called …
I just finished reading a review of mine, published only recently though I wrote it quite some time ago. It surprised me. Why? Because it’s a pretty decent piece of writing, and I have absolutely no sense of being the person who wrote it. Okay, I know I wrote it—I remember working on it–and it’s …
Visiting My Daughter In Manhattan, October, 2001 A child’s laugh shatters the glass we call rue while a ruckus of sirens jams the neighborhoods. Everywhere we walk the wind frisks us, the brisk autumn air pats us down. -=- In a cramped noodle shop a whole roast pig blurs by, burnt velvet. The harried waiter …
I can’t remember how many years ago I first “met” Russ Thorburn (ten maybe?) but it was after I saw his ad for manuscript editing in Poets & Writers. At that time I had a collection I had loosely titled “Eden Street” and, after some emails back and forth, I decided to send him a …
Two days ago I was at a local coffee house replenishing our supply of dark roast. I placed the order and handed my empty bag to the young woman behind the counter. She handed it back to me a few minutes later; as she tapped the bag, then folded and smoothed the worn paper, we …