Can you name your state’s poet laureate? If not, you have a lot of company. Although 45 of the 50 states have an official position of state poet laureate (per Library of Congress) the programs vary widely from state to state. Some of the appointments are local and, to steal a line from Ezra […]
If you’re a poet, have you ever read through what you wrote and asked yourself this question: How do you know if what you wrote is a poem? For me, a poem is a sound train. The consonants as givens, the vowels, endlessly open, endlessly Ee—ii—o—oo—aa. Airy aspirates, diphthongs, fricatives, apocopes: Poetry is sound bites […]
Do you differentiate between your work and play, your avocation and your job? Robert Penn Warren asked, “What is a man but his passion?” If you make your life’s work out of your passion, then there doesn’t need to be a distinction between vocation and avocation, or between business and poetry, or between any other […]
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