Writing

Sleeping in the Forest: my love affair with poetry, part 2

One of the first contemporary poems I loved was Sleeping in the Forest, by Mary Oliver. To adequately love a poem, you must prepare its dwelling place; memorize it. Revisit it frequently. When I found the poem (late 1980’s): Reading that poem (which is under copyright and not legally available online) felt like meditation to me. It felt …

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Tracy Lee Karner

What writing instructors should pass on to their students

For you skimmers, here is the bulleted list right up front– 9 principles I learned from a great writing instructor: Don’t be in a hurry to be published. Love learning; read copiously. Especially love literature. Memorize poems. Don’t take yourself or your writing too seriously. Take the acquisition of wisdom seriously–live decently, courageously, and well. Trust; you …

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Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending, With Butterflies, Flowers, and Jewels Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things

Thinking about changing my mind (about categories); help me decide

I ditched my categories a while back, to give myself freedom to blog about whatever I wanted to blog about. It worked. Blogging stopped feeling like a classroom  “assignment” and became a spontaneous overflowing of whatever was on my mind. And my readers weren’t freaked out when I went eclectic–instead, their feedback was that they, …

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