Being asked to feature at a poetry reading is such validation and so much fun I accept without checking the calendar first. Shame on me.

Rick Moody, when he read his short piece about the Irish rock band, the Pogues, the other night at a public reading at the Writers Institute up in Saratoga, came to the conclusion that an artist’s work doesn’t necessarily benefit when that artist relies upon drugs and alcohol in his writerly life to create more interesting and more important fiction.  I would have to agree with Rick Moody, although several old time writers,...

What may be the best remedy for those poets and writers who are struggling to get published or want to make a little bit of money by selling their own work is to find a good community of poets and writers instead of shooting for the moon and trying to woo publishers by sending them query letters, book proposals, and sample chapters.  Why do I think this?  I think it’s because a community of writers can at least support each member...

I can claim no expertise in my realtionships with women, but what I can say is that courting a woman is much like a game of sorts.  We at least try to see who needs the other more, and while this is a very immature game to say the least, such gaming is usually commonplace amongst new couples everywhere – unless some of the men involved in a relationship have straight-talking women who hate playing games with their mates, simply...

We cannot make a cotton cap out of a metonymy; we cannot put on a comparison like a slipper; we cannot use an antithesis as an umbrella; unfortunately, we cannot lay a few gaily-colored rhymes on our body by way of a waistcoat. Gautier: Mademoiselle de Maupin (1834) (My translation) ‘But if there are no stories, what end can there be, or what beginning?’ Woolf: The Waves (1931) It should not be difficult to imagine him,...

I will spare you the reasons but not the details. Just know the clashing and clanging, even if in Iambic Pentameter, will not bring you poems. Even if they did, you wouldn't be able to write them down.

When I hear the author’s name, Rick Moody, I am reminded of the snippet of news in the New York Post proclaiming that this millionare socialite who has traveled extensively to salons in both America and Europe somehow found his way to winning a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts – a place where thousands of writers each year apply for money to continue their artistic work.  So one could say that Rick Moody already...

I’ve just returned from a two-day trip to Allentown, New Jersey where my relatives live.  They live in a retirement community that is gated with too many security precautions and a beautiful clubhouse with two swimming pools – one indoor and one outdoor.  It’s interesting to see how well my family has done over the course of their lives.  While I understand that the story of their lives can’t be told in just a...

I have been seeing these signs lately – something that 1960s musicians sometimes call “the writing on the wall,” I suppose, and things really don’t look very good as far as how the country is going.  I’m glad that this is an election year, even though I lost the right to vote due to a couple of back-to-back DWIs in New York State that I earned in 2008.  Because I’m technically a convicted felon,...

Anyone who has done a poetry workshop has probably done this exercise. You read a chapter of fiction, a newsletter, anything. You pull out words from the writing and make a poem.