A former student emailed me recently to recommend an online writing community. Her goal? To get critique on her work. She’d heard horror stories about online writing groups where people stole participants’ work, and she hoped I had some good advice about finding a reputable online writing group. I hadn’t heard about that sort of […]
I was instantly hooked on this one. I love poems that give the readers an instruction – that tell us how. Plus, the imagery is just gorgeous. Enjoy! Inferno, Meet My Bridges By Rebecca Erickson Ice polishes the streets as a man and a woman struggle to meet on a bridge. They slip, hips hit
I am sucker for love poems about days gone by and creative rhymes, and this poem has both. Enjoy! Sixteen and Sixty By Jim Assid, Sioux Falls The smell of roses in your hair, Is like the trade winds’ balmy air. Your smile so sweet and rosy-cheeked Makes me forget my gray hair streaked. If
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The process of nature writing evokes the image of an individual striving to build connections with the natural world. Observations of forests and fields, roadside parks and rooftop gardens provide us with raw materials. The nature journal, for example, contains descriptions, impressions and other incomplete renderings tracked in with the mud, wind and rain. A
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Simple, gorgeous language that made me think of home. Enjoy! Strung Out by Francie Davis, Belvidere As the sun shines painfully against the miles upon miles of drifted snow, the cattle are strung out one after the other moving eastward single file eighty-two marching purposefully big black snow-capped boulders blowing exhaust through frosted nostrils parting
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Much of life can seem illusory, ethereal. Moments and events may occur, then vanish, leaving us to wonder, “Was it real? Did it really happen? Did it have an effect?” All of us have a need to know that what has happened in our lives actually happened (perhaps why so many selfies are snapped). I
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“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.” –Virginia Woolf As writers, we are each of us part observer, part critic, part dreamer, part mad scientist: we start with an idea or image and begin our furious stitching from there. But so often our creations go unfinished: we get stuck on a particularly difficult
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I admit, I first looked at these poems because of the poet’s name: Imogene De Smet. What a fabulous name! Once I read her poems, I was hooked. Enjoy! PRAIRIE LOVE SONG by Imogene De Smet, Sioux City, IA Unceasing Dakota winds pock my face With rain dry dust. My fingers tightly clutch the handle
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A timely, beautiful poem with a beautiful message. Enjoy! Revelation by Marilyn Kratz, Yankton The winds of fall have swept away brown leaves from old elm trees And now reveal what summer’s green had hidden from my gaze. Abandoned nests, their builders flown, stand out in stark relief, Mute evidence of secret toil that filled
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I am a place poet. I write about pink interstates and shorn ditches and abandoned homesteads and big rivers and cracked driveways. I write about the way the first golden light breaks over the early prairie as I drive west on I-90 in October. I write about the garbageman who predictably ushers away my recycling
