I didn't have my driver's license yet, but I convinced a friend who did to take me to Brandeis University to hear the poet, Denise Levertov. I had read some of her poems and all of her book, The Poet in the World. I can still see that cover. Wait! I still have my copy with my name and the date, 1975, written in my best cursive. Almost 50 years later I am still rereading and underlining this same book. In 1975, I was 15 years old, what did I know? But I bought myself this book($2.45) with my babysitting money and clutched it tightly. I desperately wanted to be a poet in the wo ..read more

  Did I first "meet" Eavan Boland in 1991? Sometime after my work with the Peace Corps in West Africa and before my job at Amnesty International, I worked in downtown Boston. Boland's reading took place at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. But how did I get there? I think my sister Ruby suggested going although neither of us are really sure. What I remember: Inside the library and all the way to the auditorium, security guards and tall men in suits lined the corridors. At a poetry reading? The evening's playbill, handed to us by beaming librarians, announced that the Irish C ..read more

  I just adore this photograph of Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil road-tripping with Minnow, her tuxedo cat. This week was Elizabeth Bishop's birthday, she would have been 112 on February 8th. Happy Birthday, Miss Bishop! Although we both lived in the Boston, and our times overlapped a little, I was 10 years old when she died, quite suddenly, at the age of 68 of a cerebral aneurysm in her home on Lewis Wharf which was right on the Boston waterfront and newly renovated. Miss Bishop had very refined tastes! Here's a story about her I love and that has never been told in print as far as I ..read more

I am still in shock that Linda Pastan has died. I liked knowing she was in the world. We first met when I was sixteen and she visited my high school library to give a poetry reading.  Twenty years later we met again at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She was the one that suggested I return to graduate study for an MFA. As she hugged me goodbye at the end of the two weeks, she asked me to keep in touch with her so she could follow my career. I looked over my shoulder sure she must be speaking to someone else. As a creating writing professor now myself, I'm stunned by how much power th ..read more

  Scene: the Brookline High School Library, many plastic chairs set out in rows for this special event. It was 1973 or 1974 and there was a poet in the library! Could you be alive and still be a poet? I remember thinking that she looked like she could be someone's mother (she was) and I'll admit, I was a little disappointed by this realization. That is, until she started reading her poems.  I remember being amazed at how clear each poem appeared in the air, as in: shimmering with layers of nuance. Linda Pastan made it look so easy! I was sixteen years old and just beginning to cons ..read more

  I first met Charles Simic through his book, Dime-Store Alchemy, that gorgeous, gorgeous cover which lived in the window of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop. I walked by that cover every morning on my way to work. It was the early 90's and poetry was just beginning to be part of my world, before I'd decided to do an MFA, before I'd published my first book, before I could see a life in poetry. And though I didn't "understand" this book, I was obsessed. I have bought this book several times as it seems to always be disappearing. In the early 90's, I had never seen a book with this color on ..read more

  I like to look at the positive side of life. Barack Obama said one of the things he learned early on the campaign travel is that most Americans are good.  Let's extend that out to all people, globally. If we get the chance to do the right thing (and it's free and with little effort) we will do it.  So I'd like to start the new year right by being a better literary citizen. Here are the practices I want to do regularly and I invite you to join me! 1. Review your friends' poetry books --- and if you're in the mood --- include a photo as that will increase the chances that othe ..read more

  It might not be polite to say so, but I just can't stop looking. The color, the hand, and the story it implies makes me ridiculously happy. Why this cover for this book? Creating a book of poems means knocking on a magical door---one where a beautiful hand can guide you through to the other side. You begin with a pile of poems and through the different chapters and interviews here, you learn a variety of ways to order that pile of chaos into a streamlined book with themes, braids, sections....there's many good choices.   A friend mentioned that for her, the cover image evok ..read more

I love this time of year. Anything is possible and perhaps, even probable. There are all the poems in the world to write, and all the poems on the computer to send out to journals. This season of beginning fills me with optimism. And so, after an epidemic, a new book, and some epic times of wonder, I'm here again. Over the past few years, I've tried to balance more poetry writing with more poetry community.I know I need a vibrant and diverse group of poets around me. The classes I teach and the Poets on the Coast retreat I run are both for the poets that come to the events, but ..read more

  Writing Outside the Norm with January Gill O'Neil Can I say again how thrilled I am to be teaching with January Gill O'Neil from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm on Saturday, February 5th. Yes! It's a Poets on the Coast tradition to come together on the Saturday closest to Groundhog's Day for a day of writing and community. For years, we did this in downtown Seattle, one year we went to the Two Sylvias' Offices in Kingston, and now we are coast to coast on Zoom! January and I have been friends for over a decade but this is the first class we will have ever taught together. I also want to ..read more