What I Learned in the Pacific University MFA in Writing Program

What Marriage Means to Me

The Foolishness of Poetry

The Death of Loftiness in Poetry
What follows is my subjective analysis of a statistically insignificant data set. That said, I did not conduct my experiment in search of hard-and-fast conclusions. Instead, I created a simple poll about poetry and prose titles, and asked participants what, if anything, surprised them about the results. I wanted to be surprised myself, to discover something new about how people relate to poetry. And I was. Obviously, people got questions wrong, individually and collectively. In fact, the collective wisdom didn’t end up being that much more reliable than a coin toss. But far more interestin

Poetry Book Titles: a Quick, Fun Poll for Everyone
I have been reflecting on postmodernism and poetry, and came up with the idea of a quick, easy poll to help develop some of these thoughts. Care to help me out? You don’t have to know a thing about poetry to participate. For each title in bold, simply click “poetry” if you think it sounds like the title of a poetry book, or “prose” if you think it sounds like a prose book’s title. Ready? Here we go. Are the following book titles prose or poetry? Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visi

Cloudbank Precipitates Great Poetry
“How open to suggestion / they have always been, carrying nothing // with them of the past, content to leave almost / everything behind…” -Christopher Buckley, “New Clouds” I received a complimentary copy of the premiere issue of Cloudbank today. The journal is co-edited by Peter Sears, core faculty in the

Waltzing Like a Beast
“It is a great privilege … to celebrate through poetry what is sacred between species…” -Sandra Alcosser Here is the voice of my friend and mentor, Sandra Alcosser, reading her own wonderful poem about a bear: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70eC9o-hkeI&feature=player_embedded" mce_href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70eC9o-hkeI&feature=player_embedded">Watch Video</a> You can read more about the good

Success, Longevity, Consistency, Discipline, and Love
Here is what I discovered myself thinking over breakfast--about success in the arts, and how it relates to loving the creative process: The secret to success is longevity The secret to longevity is consistency The secret to consistency is discipline The secret to discipline is love