I am deeply honored and thrilled to receive Bridget ‘s new painting.
Thank you for such an insightful read, Publisher’s Weekly. When someone calls my work "careful," I get downright blushy. Preorder it from Copper Canyon Press, here.
Here’s a profile of my writing and teaching at Iowa State University. The folks who worked on the project were wonderful.
I wrote after listening (kind of) to an audio book about adult ADHD. When I showed the poem to Ada and Jason (as I do with new poems) they both said, "Yep…that's it."
Click the groovy cover to go to there.
…loitering in Prairie Lights Bookstore, I'd camp out in a corner and pour over the latest issue, stunned by the array of utterly alien verse waiting between its uncoated card stock covers (so OG), thinking, "I gotta up my game."
My third selection for the North American Mycological Association's celebration of National Poetry Month is Laura Kasischke’s "The World's largest Living Thing."
Thanks to mushrooms, life, growing far beyond our ability to screw it up, is always happening.
From the lovely Nancy McGuire Roche, who’s always full of surprises.
”In 1979, I lived on Belmont Boulevard and John Prine lived in the house next door. I had already worn out about 3 copies of his first album by then. I knew exactly when the mail would come, and I knew John would come right out to get it. One day I was out on the front porch and my neighbor in the other apartment, Mimi Silberman, came out and sat down on the steps too. What are you doing out here, she asked. Waiting for Prine to come out and get the mail, I said. I do it every day. He's the most beautiful man I ever laid eyes on. She agreed. She was doing the same thing. So every day we came out before the mail came and smoked a cigarette and waited for Prine to get the mail. That's how we got to be best friends. Later, John's boys and my daughter would go to school together. I once told Fiona that story and she thought it was funny, but she agreed. He was the most beautiful man."
If you need me, I'll be on the porch, "waiting for Prine to come out and get the mail."
Mushrooms make me feel as if endings are illusions, which feels...pretty darn good now. For National Poetry Month, I'm posting my favorite mushroom poems on the North American Mycological Association facebook page. I hope they make you feel as lifted.
If anything gives me hope, it’s mushrooms. So I'm happy to be sharing poems about mushrooms for National Poetry Month on the North American Mycological Association Facebook page. The first is Ellen Bass' "Fungus on Fallen Alder at Lookout Creek" which unfurls in waves of impossible lusciousness like the turkey tail it depicts.