Quote Unquote: Haunted

In preparation for Wednesday’s visit with poet Mark Doty, I read the following quote from a 1997 interview to my students: 
“I wait to be haunted, as it were, by an image … What happens is something I see registers on a deeper level than most experience does. A seal in the harbor, or the wreck [...]

Things that threaten to swamp your craft

photo by Aja Riggs
Every now and then my students amaze me. Okay, at least once a week my students amaze me.

This week’s tale goes something like this: We’ve been reading poems by Mark Doty, who’ll be visiting our school Wednesday. And of course you can’t really read too far into Mark’s work without coming upon [...]

Some pancakes with that poem?

Driving out west on Route 66 through nearby Westhampton this weekend, I noticed clouds of smoke billowing above small weathered outbuildings. Around here, that can mean only one thing: maple sugar season.
 
For most people, that conjures images of metal buckets hanging from maple trees, or stacks of pancakes and waffles slathered with amber-colored maple syrup.
 
I, [...]

Quote Unquote: Weightless Words

Photo by Aja Riggs

I remember once my sister, a visual artist whose studio was filled with canvases, tubes of paints, easels and old coffee cans filled with brushes and sticks of charcoal … in short things … once saying that she was envious of me as a writer: “All you need is a pencil and paper [...]

Big Girls Do Cry

On J.’s first day at our school, where all of the students are teen moms, we happened to be having a special poetry reading. Our guest was Aleida Rodriguez, a well-known poet who has written emotionally moving poems about her mother. During the reading Aleida frequently broke into tears and then just as frequently apologized [...]