By this time, I’m ready to ask the chicken question. I’ve been scratching around for an angle, and even as I type this, I don’t have one. But Kim Addonizio tells me I don’t have to know where I’m going when I start writing, and even goes so far as to say it might be […]
Did Someone Say Twitter Poetry Party?
You heard right. It’s that time again. Tweetspeak will host a Twitter Poetry Party on Tuesday, October 9, from 9:30-10:30 p.m. EST. Wonder how these things work? @tspoetry will provide a prompt — could be a thought, a line of poetry, a short quote or even a headline. You write a line of poetry on Twitter […]
A Pencil for Emily—Near the Emily Dickinson House
I stopped recently at the home of Emily Dickinson, in Amherst, Mass., to make things right. And sweet baby irony—would you guess she stood me up?
Ordinary Genius: Entering Poetry (part 2)
Poetry asks for your intelligence and spirit. It is hard work, but good work. Come along with Kim Addonizio and enter poetry by working on your lines…
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
1 Art This afternoon while I sipped hot rooibos from a fancy gold-rimmed tea cup (Get on the bus, Gus. All the cool Tweetspeak kids are drinking tea now.), I thought to myself, “Gee, I wonder where I could get a complete listing of the 100 most iconic artworks of the last five years.” Imagine […]
Ordinary Genius: Entering Poetry
The other day I stumbled onto an old Google Talk conversation with a friend, from about a year ago. The conversation went something like this: Friend: I lurked at the Tweetspeak Twitter party last night. Me: I can’t do the Tweetspeak. Too confusing. Friend: I was lost. I’m too literal. Me: L.L. tagged me on […]
Tweetspeak Exclusive: Yet Another Emily Dickinson Daguerreotype Discovered
The recent discovery of a third daguerreotype of Victorian-era poet Emily Dickinson has historians scratching their heads.
How to Write a Sonnet Infographic: Quatrain Wreck
Want to write a sonnet? Don’t want to write a sonnet, but you have to? Either way, our Sonnet Infographic will help you laugh and write your way through.
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
1 Art For a second, I thought I was looking at one of those excruciating grade school art projects where we cut squares of crêpe paper, wrapped them around our fingertips, dipped into Elmer’s glue and then stuck them down with 3, 762 other tiny pieces of colored crêpe paper on a tag board cut-out to make […]
Ordinary Genius: Book Club Announcement
You could say I’m playing around with writing a sonnet today, as long as your definition of “playing around” is broad enough to include tapping aimlessly on my desk to The Guess Who’s Bus Rider. Our Canadian columnist Matthew Kreider loaned me one of his famous Ticonderoga pencils this weekend. It keeps a terrific desktop 70s beat, […]
Tweetspeak Love: Leah Downs
We love our Tweetspeak community — and we love hearing from you about how you love our Tweetspeak community. Recently Leah Downs shared with us about the benefits of participating, even when you can’t quite participate directly. People like me get to “eavesdrop” and keep a pulse on creativity when we don’t have time to […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Will Willingham. 1 Art As an insurance adjuster, I find the term “perfect storm” an unfortunate combination of words, unless we simply mean the sort of storm which generates a lot of business for me but in which no one is hurt and only easily […]
Must-Have Infographic: Read a Poem Today
Buy a year of happy mornings today (and become a better writer). Every Day Poems, just $5.99 Want a Sonnet Infographic? Try Quatrain Wreck: On How to Write a Sonnet Infographic by Will Willingham. ________________ How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Will Willingham 1 Art What would you do if a mystery artist left exquisite sculptures on literary doorsteps all over your city? Well, if you’re Edinburgh, City of Literature, you put them all on display in a national tour. Last year, an unknown artist crafted […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
1 Art Whatever you might think about a certain television network’s coverage of the London Olympic games, it’s been outright brilliant next to history’s treatment of art as an Olympic sport. Art competitions were a part of the games in the early twentieth century, until they fell apart over distinguishing amateur from professional. Judges couldn’t […]
The Anthologist: Motion
I found Paul Chowder at the Tip O’Neill building. He was in the passport office cajoling the bureaucrats into renewing his travel documents just days before his departure to Switzerland for some big international poetry doings because he didn’t realize he’d expired. I was there for my once-a-decade passport renewal even though I had no […]
The Anthologist: Pluck the Day
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 […]
The Anthologist: Conversation in a Laundromat
I moved upstairs to the kitchen to work. I don’t like the kitchen much. It reminds me of all the times I have to cook, and cooking is not something I enjoy. Sometimes when I cook, there’s a fire, and I’m not sure the fire extinguisher was recharged after the last one. It wasn’t my […]
The Anthologist: Book Club Invitation
Paul Chowder is a lonely writer who would have an anthology of poetry to his credit, if he could just get the introduction written and submitted to his editor. It seems, however, that this self-proclaimed “study in failure” cannot. His longtime girlfriend has left him and he is alone in the barn, trying to write […]
The Artist’s Way: Conclusion
The Artist’s Way: If growth “is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, ” we don’t need to eat a whole carp in a day.