Poetry Judges Want to Get Fat on Words

I recently had the privilege of being one of eight judges for a poetry manuscript contest. The process involved the group of us, poets and poetry lovers, spending a day reading book-length manuscripts, discussing them, and finally winnowing a stack of about eighteen manuscripts down to a select few finalists.
 
We were given only the broadest [...]

To the Poetry Lady … from Japan

The Poetry Lady received this query from a correspondent in Japan:
The poetry lady sure seems to know how to help in times of need.
So, here’s a question for her, from a fan in Japan.
My friends just don’t seem to share the poetic interests that I do. Lately I am finding myself lonely for more poetic [...]

Quote Unquote

Poetry took a hit in politics yesterday. In response to Barack Obama’s flair for eloquent and passionate speeches, Hillary Clinton was quoted in the New York Times (Sunday, Jan. 20) as saying:
“You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.”
I agree with Clinton on many issues. But I beg to differ with her here.
Instead, I choose [...]

Dear Poetry Lady Gets Help

Recently, Dear Poetry Lady, the advice column for the Lonely Hearts of the Literary World, received a cry for help. It went something like this:
Dear Poetry Lady,
Help! I have been reading more and more poems lately and now I want to write one of my own. The problem is: I’ve never written a line of [...]

Advice for Jamie Lynn & the Rest of Us

The theme in writing class this week has been “advice.” In this case we are writing letters to Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister who recently announced she is pregnant.
 
We’re taking a break from poetry to write these letters, because a local newspaper editor has offered to publish my students’ (who are teen mothers [...]

Poem for the Missing Student

For KV
 1.
She is blackness
smooth silence
can sit opposite you
and sink farther and deeper
into her own blank
stare. When at last she speaks,
she says, “When I lived
in that foster home
they made me eat foods
I’d never eaten before. Broccoli –
I’d never seen broccoli. Wouldn’t eat it.
So they hit me.” A small slap
in a short history [...]

The Scent of a Poem

Vacation week meant no poetry classes, but it did not mean (thankfully) that poetry went on vacation.
One evening during my holiday week, M visited. She mentioned a poem she had seen displayed recently, and which she wanted to get a copy of. The poem, she told me, was “A Wood” by Richard Wilbur. “Let’s see if [...]