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Here is a short essay I wrote in March, 2009, in response to a chapter in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, easily one of the most important writing books ever published.
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In which I inveigh a little more against something Billy Collins said and which got stuck in my craw. - William Reger
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The Random Number Generator has Spoken...
First of all thanks to all 16 participants- the odds were in your favor for the giveaway but only 2 could survive.
Congratulations to
What a cool idea to spread poetry - for National Poetry Month Book of Kells is advocating a big poetry book giveaway for blogsters. Visit her site to see which blogs are participating. And we at CU Poetry want to spread the love of poetry as well. What do you have to do? Simply make a comment in the comment section to be in a random drawing to win one of these two awesome books.
Scrap poetry. "A Gallery of Moments." My first effort.
Say you had 30 chances to be chosen to be part of a well known printed anthology of poetry - one chance every day for 30 days.
Say you had the chance to show off your poetry to Bob Hicok, Thomas Lux, Traci Brimhall, Sandra Beasley, Nate Pritts, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Shaindel Beers and 23 more well known poets one right after the other for 30 days in a row
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For almost two years I have been a fairly regular participant in the Trifecta Writing Challenge, which after 2 ½ years will be closing its virtual doors.
Here is their own great explanation of the site:
The other day, when I should have been grading, I listened to Billy Collins at Emory University (watch him here: http://youtu.be/bRlftnvHO2A), and was interested to hear him describe how he does not write poetry that describes his life, but that he has created a poet's "persona" to act in the world of his poetry, which is not him; otherwise poetry would "approach memoir."
While visiting Bozeman Montana this week attended a local writer’s workshop to see how we in
Champaign-Urbana can improve our own workshops.
Even out West it seems a local weekly writing workshop is a local weekly writing workshop, but I did gain some fresh perspectives as an outsider.
Here are some of our readings at the Front Porch Project in Downtown Champaign from February 28th. What a great time meeting a variety of people in the community telling their stories. We all had the place rocking.
From YouTube: Kevin Larimer, editor in chief of Poets & Writers Magazine, provides best practices for submitting poems to literary magazines and presses, and answers questions about how to navigate the publishing process.
This week we took a page from the history books and thought not about Valentinus who inspired the valentine's day holiday - and it was not just love but martyrdom, death, beheadings, interesting stuff.... Here are some of our poems
Every so often we challenge each other to write poetry using a standard form. Maybe it was from the cabin fever but for sure it was villanelle madness this week. The villanelle, a notoriously tricky little fellow (or lass) to capture was fair game for most of our writers. Amazing how such an exacting form allowed for such a diversity of voices.
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Image courtesy infinityskitchen.com
If a poet was idealistic enough, or confused enough, or even fortunate enough, to have gone to college to study poetry, he or she would have certainly had at least one semester of Formal Verse. Writing poems in Formal Verse, be it cinquain, quatrain, haiku, sestina, or the venerable sonnet, is an exercise often overlooked by autodidactic poets. One may find it confining, confounding, even confusing in some cases, but it is a proven method for mastering meter and rhythm. Poets can then bring these elements into their Free Verse and create their own stanzas and patterns to fit each particular poem.
Below are a couple of reference pages with examples of Poetic Forms.
However, new forms are being invented and created all the time so no one list will be complete. Poetic Asides, the blog of Robert Brewer from Writer's Digest, actively encourages the creation of new forms so check them out too.
The 2/4/14 CUP meeting is designated for discussion on Forms. Information can be found here
I wrote a poem once called “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes,” which obviously got some negative publicity. A couple of women wrote poems called “Taking Off Billy Collins’s Clothes,” in which that was an unpleasant, rather disappointing thing to do. I’ve been asked about that Dickinson poem because it’s a little outrageous -- I see poetry as an opportunity to be outrageous --
A great little interview from the Website Poets and Writers featuring Shin Yu Pai. She is a writer after our own hearts.
" Poetry is for the community and acts as tool to build community. When I say community, I don’t mean the literary audience of poets and writers, academics and peers. I mean everyday people engaged with the struggle and art of living fully from an authentic place that brings together mind, spirit, and heart. "