What happened to me on that blustery afternoon fifteen years ago cannot be explained. Four hundred miles from home. Bancroft, Nebraska. The area formerly inhabited by the Omaha Indians is now this small town of fewer than five hundred. Ninety-eight percent of European descent. I am ready to meet Hilda Neihardt, the author of Black […]
Search Results for: by hand
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 […]
August Rain: Stormy Weather
There is a long-standing metaphorical marriage of rain and sorrow. Painters, film-makers, musical artists — they have all used tempestuous imagery to denote loss, grief, and sadness. In 1933 Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler penned “Stormy Weather, ” the quintessential breakup song first performed by Ethel Waters. Covered by greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, […]
I am the Rain
The gerbera daisy that I had planted in an old green ceramic pitcher on my back porch isn’t red anymore. In fact, the red bloom shriveled and fell off weeks ago. But the stem and the leaves that were left behind, now they have died too. At least that’s my initial diagnosis. With my plastic […]
August Rain: The Decisive Moment
As a boy, I lived a spell in East Texas. Somewhere on the edge of the urban sprawl, my sister and I ran barefooted down dirt roads, sat under the shade of mesquite groves, and tromped through fields of briars to the neighbor-lady’s house with all the aquariums. We were home on the range and […]
Caught Flashing
Everyone knows writing conferences can get a little crazy. In fact, this normally prim poet was just caught flashing at the Midwest Writers Workshop. Fiction flashing, that is. I should have seen it coming. I hadn’t written fiction in nearly two decades, was let loose in Muncie, Indiana, without my husband and kids, and was […]
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 […]
Turning the Tide: A Short Story
Nell unpacked her suitcase on the king-sized bed in the beach condo she’d rented to remind her husband of their honeymoon three years ago. Then he could not keep his hands off his bride. Now he only had eyes for Susie Q—his miniature white poodle. Even after she gave birth to a son, John Junior, […]
August Rain: Introduction (and a bit of spiny poetry)
The heartland is ablaze. The five-o’clock news anchor tells us that Tower Mountain was kissed by lightning, that it went up like a harvest bonfire before emergency crews responded. “There have been more than 1, 000 wildfires in Arkansas this year, ” he says, “mostly in rural portions of the state.” He makes some awkward […]
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 Grateful Shrub
Tonight, my flowerpots are so dry the water I pour in forces bubbles out of the soil. Unless I’ve watered it, every plant looks tired of trying to grow. Even the ones I have watered consistently all summer weep in the evening heat. In normal years, I often wonder at the power of flowers and […]
image-ine: a visceral reaction to sound
i was blissfully unaware of the fact that people lived with music inside of them. it took falling in love to learn this life truth. he was angled and beautiful: tan skin, rippled with muscle curvature and dark curls that framed his strong jawline. the music inside of him spontaneously made its way out of […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Kimberlee Conway Ireton. 1 Art Mandy Kahn creates community poetry installations. For art galleries. At least, that’s the dream. It’s sort of like improv comedy using lines of poetry, only a lot more lyrical. Al Black used to travel the roads of Florida selling paintings […]
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 […]
July Mosaics: Concrete Poetry
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 […]
Journey into Poetry: Matthew Kreider
So much of life depends upon the lighting. Under the fluorescent bulbs of Grade 9 English, I turned to page 646, or something like that, and discovered poetry. Unit VII probably had a catchy and alliterative title, but I don’t remember it. I remember seeing bold-faced words, eerie line breaks (though I didn’t know the […]
This Week’s Top 10 Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Matthew Kreider.
Seamus Heaney, Gem-Cutter
Human Chain refutes the notion that poetry is the province of the young. It’s a collection of poems that demonstrates Heaney’s love of words and language, carefully chiseled and strung together like brilliant diamonds.
July Mosaics: Juxtaposition
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.