Yesterday, I suggested that writing a poem can commemorate an experience such that you can return to it again and again. In fact, some deeply felt experiences are difficult, if not impossible, to describe in a language other than the…

Celebrating National Poetry Month.

William Carlos Williams said: 

                     “It is difficult 
                      to get the news from poems 
                      yet men die miserably every day 
                      for lack 
                      of what is found there.” 

What can be found in a poem? Mary Oliver’s poems…

Welcome to Day 2 of posting a poem a day from “Raised in the Shadow” in honor of National Poetry Month! As always, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to hear me read you today's poem.

 Thanks…

Poetry has the power to open you up and suspend time, elevate you. It opens the door into the moment. It's too long a story to tell here, but suffice it to say that my…

Hello friends,

Last night I started reading Louise Glück's "Proofs and Theories -  Essays on Poetry." Of the many books we own of writers writing about writing, "Proofs and Theories," a collection of  her short…

Dear Friends, 
  
In March of 2012, I wrote a song called “Rabbit Holes” because I’m interested in the perennial questions we can’t seem to answer:  How did the universe begin, what’s it made of, is there a God? I find…

I'm happy to announce that this week Amazon rates "Raised in the Shadow", my life in 25 poems, as #607,825 on their best-seller list. Last week it was rated #3,225,478. For those of you who don't have a pencil and…

“They say a neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. And a psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.” – Jerome Lawrence

I would add…

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

I fight off the snow…

Hi Kids,

Old Ideas. Don't you love it? What beautiful ambiguity. Old ideas as in those that have been around for a while and old ideas as in those of an old man. 

Here is another septeguenarian in our series…