Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Poetry’ Category

Apr 17

4 Comments

Four ways to cultivate writerly inspiration

A young woman introduced herself to me at a poetry reading recently. “I write poetry, too,” she said. “But only when the inspiration strikes me.”

Ah, youth. I remember saying the same thing when I was younger.

You see, I’d bought into the myth that writers are a temperamental lot who only write when their muse “inspires” them. Fortunately, I’ve grown as an artist and realize now that the best writers are the ones that cultivate their inspiration daily. They discipline themselves to write each day even when they’re tired or don’t feel like writing. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, inspiration becomes a habit.

How can you cultivate inspiration? Read more

Apr 13

4 Comments

Three poetry sites to inspire your muse

In honor of National Poetry Month, here are three poetry websites I subscribe to and why:

Academy of American Poets at www.Poets.org.  I lead a busy life, so I especially love receiving the poem of the day in my email. I may not have time to peruse the entire site each day, but I do have time to open an email and read the poem of the day. I feel as if I’m enriching my life a poem at at time. Read more

Apr 11

A poem about a poem becoming a poem

Considering my love of all things related to writing, it makes sense that I like poems about writing.  A friend recently sent me the poem “Workshop” by Billy Collins–a poem about a poem becoming a poem.

You’ll have to read the poem to understand what I mean.

Collins’s poem sparked my own idea for a poem. Double bonus.

Exercise: Pick a favorite poem about writing and use it to inspire your own.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Apr 5

2 Comments

A new poem for National Poetry Month

 

In honor of National Poetry Month, I’m posting one of my poems below. Ideas for poems are everywhere. Most of my ideas come from daily life–like this poem below, “A rice farmer from California.”

Please visit us again this month for more posts about poetry.

Read more

Mar 28

1 Comment

One way to exercise your writer’s mind and have fun

In Ayn Rand’s The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, she recommends exercising our writer minds long before we actually put words to paper. Then when we do begin to write, the ideas and words flow. I like her advice and think of it in terms of being playful and having fun.

As I read, sometimes a sentence or phrase stops me in my tracks. When this happens, I like to examine the sentence, learn from it or just play around with it.

This happened to me recently when I read this line: “Men do not often boil a woman’s rabbit.” I was reading best-selling author Bob Mayer’s description of different archetypes of men and women. At first, this sentence stopped me because I didn’t understand it. I had to take a few minutes to wrap my brain around it. Finally, I got the meaning—we often see women “boiling a man’s rabbit,” but not vice versa. Read more

Mar 15

2 Comments

Outline key elements of your story, poem, or essay with one simple exercise

As I was reorganizing files last week, I found a writing exercise I’d done that helped me see how I could quickly sketch out the outline of a story from beginning to end in about 12 to 15 sentences (or more depending on how deep you want to take it).

I discovered the exercise in the book Writing and Publishing Personal Essays by Sheila Bender. She assigns it to help her students practice collecting sensory images. She credits a poem by poet Charles Proctor as the inspiration.

It’s a good focusing tool to note the key elements of a writing idea and chart the beginning, moments of conflict, middle, and resolution. And it works whether you’re writing a poem, memoir, short story, or novel. Read more

Mar 13

Check out this poetry class in a book

I’ve always loved poetry. But it wasn’t until I studied for my MFA that I really began to delve into the craft of writing it after one of my advisors gave me the assignment to annotate poetry. By directing me to study poetry, she knew I would understand the power of words in a new way.

While poetry wasn’t my main focus, that taste of learning about it at a deeper level spurred me to continue studying on my own. Besides writing and reading poetry, I’ve found several books in which poets discuss their approach to writing. Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »