In a few weeks, my husband, daughter and I will move out of the yellow house across from the public library, a house that has been in his family for 75 years. Daisy, now 18, was 2 years old when she nestled into the same bedroom in which her grandmother spent her...
I spent last week at the beach. My plan was to do a bunch writing and read several books. The writing would happen in the quiet of the morning while the rest of my family slept and I’d read on the beach. Even as we packed the car, I wondered if my two bags full of...
In the dark night of my habits, when sleep avoids me like a troublesome child, I find my life has become a series of other people’s requests, demands, interests and needs. Surely, it’s my fault, all mine, to have put myself on the lowest shelf, deep behind the...
While this day is a celebration of the birth of our nation, I think it’s also a day to reflect and, of course, celebrate what makes the U.S. of A such a great nation. I appreciate all the women writers, poets, photographers, painters–artists–who dare to...
Image: Kurt Vonnegut is one of the many writers from Indiana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Indiana Writing retreats can be expensive and difficult to schedule. How can busy parent-writers arrange to attend a reasonably priced writing retreat when...
Two White Beds by Laura Cherry Maya Angelou said “I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare.” Winner of Minerva Rising’s inaugural chapbook contest, “Two White Beds” is a collection of poetry that dares. It...
In case you haven’t heard, Minerva Rising’s fifth issue, “Turning Points” is out. I’m so proud of the poets in this issue. With poems like “Sunday”, “true story about lake & loss”, and “What the Apple...
A long, long time ago, when I was in my 20s, in grad school, and then living in Paris, I tried for a while to publish my short stories, poems, essays and one academic paper on the grotesque that my professor thought worthy. (I gave up on the research paper after five...
Here’s a peek inside my early introduction to poetry: I came across Tennyson’s collected works, an 1880s copy in a used bookstore when I was 15. I took it home and started reading voraciously – I loved the imagery of “The Lady of Shalott”: Out flew the web and floated...
I teach memoir, but I mostly write poetry. This works well because of the inherent prose lessons in poetry concerning concision, sound, voice, facts and even plot. Concision & Precision: Poetry is usually* more concise than prose. (*Of course there are prose poems...
