Wizard Altar, by Janet Riehl “Thinking as if…magic is real.”
If someone gave you a million dollars, what would you do with it?
If you could be a character from any book, who would you be?
What is the silliest thing to ever happen to you?
In the spring of 2008 Nigerian poet Obi Nwakanma filled my Gathering Room with talk that made the world right for the hours he shared himself and conversation. In the days that followed our encounter, I stayed in my cave and read “The Horseman and Other Poems,” often calling friends to read sections of the…
by Billy Collins from The Apple that Astonished Paris During my Poem-of-the-Day series on Riehlife we’ll have a mixture of named poets & others just like the rest of us. My friend Stephanie Farrow in Albuquerque, New Mexico chooses the Big Name Poets. She sends her picks out via email every day. I’ll be scooping…
Bamboo by Jane Hirshfield From “Orion” What exists wants to persist. Even the knock of bamboo on bamboo spilled outward continues. And you who have lived—restless, ambitious, aggrieved. A Walter, a Shirley, a Tim. A Carlos, a Teisha, a Haavo. Do not think it unchanged, this world you are leaving.
Algebra has a poetry of its own. Poetry has an algebra of its own. 1) How is poetry like an algebra equation? 2) What is the ration and proportion of poetry? 3) What is your definition of “earned abstraction”? How does a poem earn the use of abstract concepts and words?
At the Spring 2007 Integrating Spirit and Caregiving Conference I just attended the “I Remember” exercise was the centerpiece of my Give Sorrow Words workshop. Participants grouped at tables around newsprint created a life story for a woman who has dementia. Each table wrote from a different perspective/role/voice. ·The woman herself (the patient) ·Her husband…
In this section: 9 poems, 1 Essay, 2 photos DOUBLE RAINBOW VISION Like a bridge up to Heaven, perhaps. The sunset is like that, too. Angels climb onto the sunset, trees, and skies. These are the gates of Heaven. A week after a good person dies then a rainbow happens. The rest rise up on…