A Chat About the Future of Poetry
The founding editors of three of today’s most well-respected online poetry journals had a talk about the future of poetry with “The Review Review.” Here’s the link. Rob MacDonald of Sixth Finch Journal, Matt Hart who edits Forklift Ohio Journal and Gale Marie Thompson who runs Jellyfish Magazine spoke about how the masses perceive poetry and how this is affected by the […]
A Calendar Square Like a Prison Yard
From Marge Piercy’s book “The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing.”
Another New Poem in Spanish
Zócalo Poets, a bilingual poetry project published a few of my poems. I posted the first last week. Here is the second. Thanks for reading!
Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, op. 21
Older folk lift closed eyes. Those with large noses open their mouths. A precise woman in pearls wears her white hair in a cocoon bun. Her cheekbones tighten like mountain air. The few who lean in defy middle age: spine bent, forehead lined. Men move more than their dates, confirm rhythms with the dip of eroded chins. But […]
My Work Featured on ArtiPeeps
A big thank you to the community writing project ArtiPeeps, who graciously featured my poetry this weekend. Please click here to read “Oh, Zelda” and “A Notion of Marriage.”
Bridges as They Come
From page three of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.” Mr. Kafka wastes no time.
Miami Literary
“Jai-Alai Magazine” is Miami’s newest contribution to the literary world. It is a bilingual pleasure to read. Look it up in Miami if you are ever in town. Here is it’s sixth edition set against, what else, another beautiful Miami Saturday.
Cloud Poem
This is my first of many (I hope) mixed media poems. A timid attempt, to be sure. But a start is a start. WordPress doesn’t allow video uploads so please click on the image to go The Drugstore Notebook’s Tumblr page to view the video.
Mother is Drinking to Forget a Man
“Mother is drinking to forget a man / who could fill the woods with invitations” is perhaps one of the best poem openers I’ve come across. Sure, it’s simple. But it is also grotesque. The phrase is already a poem before the poem even begins. This line opens Lynn Emanuel’s poem “Frying Trout While Drunk.” Emanuel is a […]
New Poetry in Spanish
Zócalo Poets, a dynamic community of multi-lingual writers, published some of my Spanish poetry. I will be posting the poems over this upcoming week. Here is the first, about the moment in a relationship when things are about to take off, but, before they do, we must simply wait. I have a complete poetry book […]
All of a Sudden, 5,000 Followers!
Thanks to everyone who reads and follows my blog. It really means a lot! And, all of a sudden, The Drugstore Notebook has more than 5,000 followers. Happy weekend to all!
Our Teenage Self
When Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska dreams of meeting her teenage self, the only thing she recognizes are the eye sockets. This picture was taken way far out in the Colombian Plains, during a quick, off-road rally break. Here is the rest of the poem: Teenager Me—a teenager? If suddenly, here, now, she stood […]
Oh, Happy Day
Walt Whitman is unbeatable at expressing, to use a word of his, athletic joy. The opening lines of “Song of Myself,” pictured above, are worth committing to memory for they express a private, but generous, feeling of celebration. Today, I feel like celebrating. The sun is shining here in Aspen, Colorado, happiest of happy places, where […]
I, too, Am America
“Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a genuine art life. . . .”wrote author Du Bose Heyward in the New York Herald Tribune in 1926. Despite such praise, Hughes was derided by his fellow black writers of the time for allowing race to be a […]
Transgender in the Air
A few weeks ago, I finished Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex.” For those who haven’t read it, it’s about a hermaphrodite named Calliope, then Cal. The book’s merits have been sung far and wide, so I won’t repeat them here. I did want to share a passage from the novel that I loved though. […]
Recital
I can’t get over the week I spent in a tiny Colombian town for the 30th Annual Encounter of Women Poets. It was a week of many firsts for me. But, the biggest one was reciting my poems for the first time. I could not have asked for a better place to do so. The […]
“Oh, Zelda” – A Poem
East Coast Ink Magazine published my poem “Oh, Zelda,” inspired by F. Scot Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda
It Existed
This post was written from Roldanillo, Colombia, a tiny town toward the west of the country. I was there all week attending the Colombian Women Poets Festival for the first time ever. So I had time for a quick post featuring U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand, taken a few months ago in a páramo, a cloud forest located […]
“The Napkin Trick” in Dagda Publishing
It’s been done before: The intention of conversation starts and ends with a slow walk around a familiar, short block – the light purse or empty pocket. (Tonight after all should only call for some cash.) A set of doors is chosen but not broached, and reluctance comes as a reminder of isolated drinks where […]
A Week with Colombia’s Women Poets
I am in the small Colombian town of Roldanillo for the 30th Annual Meeting of Colombian Women Poets, held at The Rayo Museum (above). I will be here all week, the longest I spend alone in such a small town. Below is my official badge, which features an emblematic work by Omar Rayo, one of […]