get your poem on #102
by Deb Scott It’s Thursday, and time to post links to this week’s poems (or leave us your poem, verbatim, in the comments). Did you write about  food associations or something else entirely? Was this week’s holiday (in the States) a prompt or an impediment? Whatever you did, share it with us, and come back all weekend to check up on your fellow poets. Some folks might have a big meal planned today and won’t have the (cough) [time] [fortitude] [guts] [stomach] to get back here for a day or two. Please read

workshop redux: specificity
Today’s column is about how specificity works in a poem and what it can do for the landscape of the piece. We’re going to use Ruth Stone’s poem, “Pokeberries,” as an example. But before you take a look at it, we wanted to share our “revision” of that poem. If you are familiar with the original, our changes will stand out immediately. Give it a read anyway, whether you’ve read the original or not, and try to focus on how the poem makes you feel and how it resonates with you. Pokeberries I started out in the mountains with my grandma’s bed and my aunt’s wine. We lived on ver

have you been looking for a submissions calendar?
Poets & Writers has one on their website (a companion to the bimonthly* print edition, with lots of good content). “Use our handy calendar to schedule your submissions to writing contests, grants, and other literary awards.” It is very handy. * According to definition (1.1).

games poets play: truths and lies
by Dana Guthrie Martin Is the following essay about me true or false? I love the way hand puppets warm my hand. I enjoy talking to them and through them. Before I know it, my hand is moving on its own, and the puppet truly seems to be inhabited by something — dare I call it a spirit? Why not ascribe a spirit to a hand puppet. Isn’t the act of playing with one merely a way of projecting one’s own self, and who says self — or spirit — must reside inside one’s physical body? Much the way the mind is comprised of both what is within and outside us, can’t the spirit be both interior and exterior? I have at tim

american life in poetry
by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 There are thousands upon thousands of poems about love, many of them using predictable words, predictable rhymes. Ho-hum. But here the Illinois poet Lisel Mueller talks about love in a totally fresh and new way, in terms of table salt. Love Like Salt It lies in our hands in crystals too intricate to decipher It goes into the skillet without being given a second thought It spills on the floor so fine we step all over it We carry a pinch behind each eyeball It breaks out on our foreheads We store it inside our bodies in secret wineskins At