Charting Territory

Today, in preparation for an upcoming workshop, I've re-read Gregory Orr's fascinating essay "Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry." In this piece, Orr delineates four temperaments to poetry, two he calls "limiting impulses" (Story and Structure) and two he calls "limitless" (Music and Imagination.) Within his essay, he makes many interesting arguments, for example: …

Frogs Like Poetry

Thanks to all who came out to "Words in the Park" today at Mill Pond Park in Mt. Pleasant. It was a huge pleasure reading with two great Jeffs: Jeffrey Bean and Jeff VandeZande. Bean's new work--including a poem about a dream where he and his wife are floating at sea on a boat that …

What Guides the Tides

Many artists analyze, perhaps over-analyze their creative lunar calendars. Count me among briefly, I guess, as I've recently been considering my own ebbs and flows. We do this like train conductors, when we sense the steam lagging, when we worry if the coal's running low. In looking at my writing folders from the past decade, …