She shakes me out, she jiggles me down starts me dancing like a rodeo clown. Twist to the left, twist to the right never do we get too way up tight. She stays so near, […]
Two Riders Were Approaching
Two riders were approaching on hogs and wearing leather. “Let’s stop here,” said one to the other, “for a cool drinking beer.” They passed the time on songs that ofttimes rhymed. On the trail or […]
What is Essential?
In John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing,” we find the following comment: “It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.” Likewise, we […]
Charlatan Beckett
The biographer Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett’s first official biographer, has passed away, the Times reports: ‘His first words to her, she wrote in “Parisian Lives,” were, “So you are the one who is going to […]
The Man With the Blue Guitar
The guitar, given the day would be green, could not have been any other color. The sky would blaze orange when the guitar mixed its sounds with the day. Wallace Stevens was not a poet […]
The Poet’s Tale
The poet is born in squalor, his first love. Some of the poet’s favorite words include seedy, shabby, seamy. These are words made with a hissing sound. In phonics, that sound is called a sibilant, […]
In a Frenzy
Why are the TV newscasters shouting, frantic, frenetic, in a frenzy, like callers at auctions, preachers at land’s end, the newsboy on the corner hawking papers: Extra, Extra, Read All About It! It now being […]
Weeds in the Garden of Truth
Browsing the occasional poem or two every now and then found in a magazine or tripped over somewhere online is a different experience from reading a handheld book of poems straight through as if it […]
The Epic Virus and Examined Life
Nothing like an Epic Virus to remind one how connections work. Members of this current batch of humans share just about everything of themselves, like it or not, even their money, some more some less […]
Every Writer Has A Thousand Faces
I first met the poet David Biespiel sitting in the green wooden bleachers at a Southeast Portland Little League baseball game. His son Lucas was on the same team as my son Eric. I had […]
