April 29, sonnet. Sharing one of my favorite poets, Terrance Hayes, and a few poems from his collection, American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin.

April 28, inspiring quote. Ok, so is it cheating not to pick a poetry quote for poetry month? No! I say anything can inspire a poet, including the great Kurt Vonnegut in his opening lines of Slaughterhouse Five. This line is the maxim of a poet. We approximate towards meaning, some embracing music some embracing trauma, all of us bringing our life and the wide life of the world into our work. All this happens, more or less.

April 27, poem in your pocket. Today we walked with Basho.

April 26, ekphrastic. This type of poetry is some of the first that I ever appreciated and wrote on my own. Back in my undergrad, my poetry mentor and professor introduced me to Anne Sexton and her collection TRANSFORMATIONS as well as the poem below. I adored the idea of taking something well known, like artwork, and using it for poems. Ekphrastic asks the writer to look deeper and even beyond the edges of the frame, to incorporate what they see and what they feel as the artwork comes to life before them. Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters and his style of artwork always felt poetic to me, seeing the world through a slightly distorted and disorienting lens. I will always love his artwork Starry Night and I think this poem by Anne Sexton pulls so much from the work. They should always be placed together.

April 25, favorite word right now. If you’ve read my poetry, you know this word needs no introduction…

But really, space is fascinating and I cannot contain my enthusiasm for it! Just the incredible, primordial expanse of the “place” and the fact that all of us are made of stars. We come from the ancient parts of the universe and it’s in us. Our brain scans look like nebulas. Our the neurons in our nervous system are supernovae. I cannot stop thinking about space.

April 24, hybrid. I love a good prose poem. I also love the ancient chimeras of myth and the cryptids of American folklore. Ohio’s got three of them! Hybrids are beautiful and strange, like their animal/human counterparts. We have interchangeable names for the poetry/fiction/nonfiction chimera and all relate to the lovely word prose. The beautiful block of language that funnels meaning into us as we read, as we are surprised to read something unexpected. Sharing my favorites here.

April 23, annotated poem. Very lucky that yesterday included a revision workshop and I got to start annotating a poem that I really love, but just isn’t in the right place right now. The process really helped me see the vision of the original piece and move beyond it.

April 22, collage. Happy Earth day! On this beautiful, thundering day I participated in the Lit Cleveland Poetry Festival at Case Western Reserve University. It was a wonderful day of workshops with brand new faces and a couple familiar ones. I learned so much and I made a new friend–amazing to say as an adult! The community of poets in Northeast Ohio is ever expanding for me. I was fortunate enough to take workshops from Zach Savich (on sound and music), Ali Black (on the real and raw), and Robin Beth Schaer (on revision). It was so good to write with others today and to hear everyone’s ideas and works in progress. So, here’s the collage of my day.

April 21, published poem. Sharing a poem from pre-pandemic from a poetry month feature called Ohio Loves You (presented by the now sadly defunct Barnhouse Journal). What I love about this poem is the ars poetica feel and the playful nature.

April 20, water. Here’s a poem in progress for your sunny April evening.