“Poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.”
what is a good life?
“The most important philosophical question ever asked is “what is a good life?” A good life is one which mirrors the world. That means that you understand the world through art and culture. You understand the genius of the human race and you understand yourself in relation to it. You’re like a little tiny shard of mirror glass that’s exactly a copy of the whole world. You’re very beautiful because you understand the beauty of the world and you understand the human race and you want to do your best. ”
the slippery text
“What I always look for in my work is tension, the tension between, for instance, a transparent narrative and a number of other possibilities for poems. I’m interested in the slippery text, the multi-vocal text, and the text that can investigate itself and the possibilities of different positions and stances.”
fantasy
Real life can disappoint, break your heart, your head. Fantasy is how I make light from the dark. How I create from the ashes.
fantasy (n.)
early 14c., "illusory appearance," from Old French fantaisie, phantasie "vision, imagination" (14c.), from Latin phantasia, from Greek phantasia "power of imagination; appearance, image, perception," from phantazesthai "picture to oneself," from phantos "visible," from phainesthai "appear," in late Greek "to imagine, have visions," related to phaos, phos "light," phainein "to show, to bring to light" (from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine").
Sense of "whimsical notion, illusion" is pre-1400, followed by that of "fantastic imagination," which is first attested 1530s. Sense of "day-dream based on desires" is from 1926. In early use in English also fantasie, phantasy, etc. As the name of a fiction genre, by 1948.
— from etyonline
virtual book tour - extras
The publisher of THE FERGUS Skyrocket Press booked me on a virtual book tour with Silver Dagger Book Tours. The book was featured on 45 book bloggers’ websites. I had no idea there were so many. During the course of the tour Skyrocket sold 11 copies of THE FERGUS.
My brother and illustrator Mick Koller created some fun (and very brief!) book trailers for me to share with blog audiences.
Bog Grove
The Woods
reading this is how it is
Penn and Rosie and their family of five totally captured my heart. The writing is heartfelt and inventive. (I underlined many surprising, and somehow perfect, metaphors.) And although the situation-plot was very particular, it felt universal. We are all becoming. I don’t want to give away too much, for fear of spoilers, but the story within a story construct was like the icing on the cake. I couldn’t put it down.
I will be recommending to friends and family!
reading why poetry
A few favorite passages from a book that re-investigates the urgency of poetry.
“The creation of the poetic state of mind in poet and reader is inextricably connected with form. A poem, literally, makes a space to move through. To read a poem is to move through that constructed space of ideas and thinking. ”
“Poetry is a constructed conversation on the frontier of dreaming. It is a mechanism by which the essential state of reverie can be made available to our conscious minds. By means of the poem we can enter this state of reverie with all our faculties alert and intact. Poems make possible a conscious entry into the preconscious mind, a lucid dreaming”
art as poetry
I participated in a Art as Poetry as Art exhibit, presented by the Lakeshore Artists Guild and Basil IshkaBibble’s art gallery in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
It was a “call and response” event in which artists and poets inspired each others’ work. 15 poets submitted 15 poems. 15 artists submitted 15 works of art.
Six months later, we each created one new poem or artwork “inspired” by a submitted work or poem for a concert of creativity — 30 pair of submitted and inspired works.
It was a very cool experience, and I hope I get to repeat it. The exhibit was truly a symphony of creativity.
The Poem I Submitted & the Artwork It Inspired
The Artwork that Inspired a New Poem
eating and drinking literary
I love literary combinations of food or wine. Here's one for hot chocolate, based on literary characters. Hot chocolate is one of my not-so-secret indulgences.
reading crazy brave
I received this book as a gift from my son. It was an incandescent memoir. Not just the exterior happenings but the interior response to them. How they formed her as a thinking, feeling, creative being. Not everything. But the crossroads, the thresholds, the breaking through. Ending with how she found poetry. Or rather how poetry found her. I will now carry it with me.
