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...
Last night, before I went to bed, I mentally planned my writing week. I’d start by rewriting a piece I wrote about Raymond Chandler’s quote: “ The faster I write the better my output. If I’m going slow, I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the words instead of being...
One day, summers ago, I saw my physical duplicate crossing a quiet side street in small town Michigan. A visit “home,” I was driving somewhere to somewhere else, a nondescript errand in a place often defined by them, I stopped at an unnecessary stoplight,...
ISSUE 5: Turning Points This issue of Minerva Rising is full of stories of hope and of that elucidating point of turning to the deep intuition at the core of one’s self. “Learning to Let Go” chronicles the journey of a woman who rediscovers life after the death of her...
This weekend I am on the North Carolina coast with women who attended the last Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico. We look east over the Atlantic Ocean, hear the lull of waves, write, share meals, tell life stories, sip good Oaxaca mezcal,...
There are those days when my best-laid writing plans get lost among the myriad needs of my household, my family of four, my scattered mind. On a day or a series of days like that, I find it nearly inevitable that I end the night with a berate of myself: “You need to...
Breathe in oxygen./ Breathe out poetry. -Muriel Rukeyser Breathe out peace, breathe out fullness, breathe out impressions, breathe out truth. . . . But what happens when you have exhaled and exhaled and emptied yourself and there are just. no. words. left?? What...
By Lindsey Grudnicki I’m truly excited to share this month’s featured journal with you. After a crazy spring – new job, busy days, little time for literary pursuits, etc. – reading Quaint Magazine brought the reader/writer/editor in me back to the forefront. The works...
When two things are touching, says my fourteen-year-old, the expert scientist, who is not quite an expert yet, by nature of his fourteen-year-oldness, they’re not really touching. Between skin on skin, folds of paper, words & silence, ink & white, between...
