Several of you have asked about working with me privately, individually or in classes, so I’m going to schedule a Fridays at 4 zoom session this week for anyone who would like to explore the possibilities.  You can also read about the topic on the Work With Me section of the web page.  If you can’t make the session, you can email me with your suggestions and preferences.  Scroll all the way down for the zoom link. Here are some of my thoughts for classes.  I’m thinking roughly of five- or six-week classes, and the cost will depend on how many people sign up. Classes  ..read more

In one of the last Fridays at 4 discussions I mentioned my bafflement at the current popularity of prompts for poems, and that’s still on my mind, partly because I don’t think any of the poems I love and go back to started that way.  I can’t imagine Frost or Bishop or Plath  or Clifton or Szymborska wanting or needing a prompt from someone else. But when I read a poem I love, I do imagine how it might have come into being–where did it start, and why is it shaped the way it is?  I can only guess, unless the poem itself reveals its origin, or the poet talks about it in an intervi ..read more

This week I’m interested in what poetry books we’re all reading right now.  What’s on your bedside table–or chairside, or desk?  The poems here are from mine, and range in time from the 1920’s (Mistral’s poems) to 2023.  I hope you’ll comment on these and add own examples.  Just a reminder that the next Fridays at 4 (eastern time) will be in two weeks, on March 31st.   BALD-FACED HORNETS EATING THE PORCH Molly Tenenbaum   In old gray wood so soft a fingernail can scribble it, they’ve bitten new tan trails. Little cartographers, chiseling maps by subtracting the ..read more

  This week I’d like to talk about Mary Ruefle’s poetry, and some excerpts from her prose.  Her work always shakes me awake, and makes me see the world in new ways.  Sparks fly.  Please feel free to add your own comments and favorites, and we’ll discuss it all at this week’s Fridays at 4 (eastern time). SOFTLY, SOFTLY One of the loveliest possibilities is that the truth is made of glass but shaped like a hammer by using it you’ve broken it think of it! & it lies broken at your feet not in your hands never can you hold it, lassie it will not come back but there it is, ve ..read more

       I assume you’re all familiar with the Favorite Poem Project that was founded by Robert Pinsky when he was US Poet Laureate in 1997.  Eighteen thousand people responded, from all across the country, and videos are available online.  It’s incredibly moving to listen and watch as people read the poems and say why they chose them, and always reminds me of the place of poetry in our ongoing lives.   This statement on the Project home page describes my own sense of poems: “Poetry is a vocal art, an art meant to be heard in the reader’s voice—whether a ..read more

        Now that we’ve spent two weeks looking at ways poets create music in long-lined free verse, I wanted to listen back to long lines in meter–specifically pentameter and hexameter, five- and six-feet lines.  Iambic pentameter is the most frequently used used foot and measure in English poetry, of course, but there’s very little hexameter (though as you’ll see I found a few examples).  But some of the earliest Western literature was composed in dactylic hexameter: /– /– /– /– /– /–.  If you google it, you can listen to how it sounded.  I happe ..read more

        I’d like to continue our discussion from last week of C. K. Williams’ long-line free verse poems, and to look at examples by other contemporary poets. When American poets first began to break away from the standard iambic meter–predominantly pentameter–poets had used for centuries, they did so in one of two ways.  Pound, Eliot, and others did it by keeping the meter but varying the line length.  William Carlos Williams, and others who followed, wanted to hear in new rhythms altogether, something that would better capture American speech and contemporary ..read more

  I’ve been thinking of C. K. Williams’ poems recently, with their incredible formal inventions.  The first book I read of his was With Ignorance, published in 1977.  From its unusual shape to the poems inside, it was something new in the poetry universe.  It’s almost square, not rectangular, and the poems inside use long lines that go all the way across that wide page, with the longest turning over to the next line, and indented to indicate that. The poems themselves are long, two, three, or four pages.  But as soon as I started to read it was clear that that just as ..read more

  This week is a poetry potluck.  It’s your chance to bring something to the party–a poem you like or have questions about, a poem you’re drawn to but can’t quite get hold of, a poem you argue with, a poem you turn to for solace.  What we talk about this time depends on you.    Please click on Poetry Pot Luck in red on the right to add your own choices in the comments here,  and say why you chose them, or email them to me so I can include them in this week’s Fridays at 4 (eastern time) discussion.  I’ve provided a couple of appetizers.   ONE BITE ..read more

  It was such a pleasure to see the poems you brought last time, I’d like to try another version of that this week.  But instead of bringing your favorite poems, I’d like you to bring poems you have questions about, poems you can’t get in focus, poems you circle around without ever quite getting in.  I can’t promise answers, but maybe seeing them from different angles will help you put the pieces together in a way that makes sense to you.  I’ll start us off with a poem by Dean Young, a well-known poet I’ve always been drawn to but never read closely.  I’m about to do ..read more