A resolutions poem from Anne M. Doe Overstreet for the New Year.

  At Tweetspeak Poetry, we’ve got a few easy ways for you to bring poetry to your holidays. 1. Watch for our upcoming Hanukkah/Christmas/New Year’s category at WordCandy WordCandy is a free, fun way to send holiday greetings. Lots of poetry quotes to choose from and pair with beautiful photography. (Check out some of our [...]

I scheduled a date with Paul Chowder on Friday. We were supposed to hang out and talk about Sara Teasdale. He’d been going on about how some poets spend too much time thinking about death, like going to a movie and just waiting for the credits, which my dad taught me are very interesting if you [...]

In the summer of 2008, the local Barnes & Noble invited Geoffrey Brock to read from his first book of Poetry, Weighing Light. Metal folding chairs were placed between the do-it-your self section and the clearance picture-book aisle. I’m not sure whether it was the ideal spot for a poetry reading, what with patrons whizzing through [...]

Years ago, I had the privilege of rubbing eyeballs with royalty. Flanked by an impressive retinue of distinguished figure heads, the fair-skinned and curly-haired king stood before a hushed audience at my university and delivered a cultural manifesto on the artist's role in creating the juxtaposition of political and religious imagery to benefit and protect society. But I was more interested in his shoes.

Seeing the tubes and bottles of paint brought a smile to my face. I was packing a bag to take to a friend’s house for the day, and among the things I was bringing were the paints, a jar filled with brushes of all sizes, and a couple of fresh white canvases. Sarah, an artist [...]

A few days after we announced our July Mosaics project, someone left us a tiny confession in the comment box. "When this idea was first posted, wrote Rosanne Osborne, "I admit I was dubious, but it’s been amazing to me how generative the experience has been."

Ben Henderson's new wobble was supposed to be the secret weapon he needed to save his career.

We buy a couple of corn dogs and head over to the free stage. My eyes wander off and I see a teenage girl standing on the back of a motorized wheelchair, lurching left and right, while her driver zig-zags across Main Street like a Hollywood stunt driver. I'm thankful city planners have shut down the streets to car traffic. Not just for the jazz festival. But so people can move, for four days, any way they choose.

Jazz is what happens to all of us -- when somebody jumps out of her box.

Jazz great Art Blakey #once said, "Music washes away the dust of every day life." With a pair of drumsticks, he did just that, uncovering a new style of bebop drumming. He gave music a new shine. Poetry scrubs us down with a back-and-forth hygiene, too.