I wrote this opinion piece soon after the Golden Globes and sent it to the Albany Times Union, but since they haven’t published it, I decided to share it here. Reading it now, nearly a month later, I stand by what I said then. Awards shows are one of my guilty pleasures, and the Golden… [Read More]
Can my Blue Sky Day Designer get me organized in 2018?
I tossed off this poem yesterday afternoon so I’d have something new to read at the Caffe Lena open mic last night. The historic coffeehouse has been beautifully expanded and renovated, and it has a spiffy new lobby and an elevator that makes it handicap-accessible for the first time. Kudos to Carol Graser, who’s kept… [Read More]
The Week of The Taint
I’ve published this post before, but I believe it’s worth an encore. I’m going to reprise it tonight at the Troy Poetry Mission open mic at O’Brien’s. Warning: it’s a bit gross. Norwegians have a word for the week between Christmas and New Year’s: romjula. The closest we have in English is the word Taint, meaning it… [Read More]
The Most Over-Hyped Time of the Year
Only four days till Christmas, and I’m immersed in the holiday spirit. But there have been past Christmases when I was mired in depression or feeling very “bah humbug” about the holidays. I’m well aware that this season conjures up a wide range of emotions in shades from joy to despair, and that December can… [Read More]
Twelves ways of looking at Christmas Consumption
In my last post, I described using Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” as a stylistic model for creating an original poem. In my Alchemy of Creative Writing workshop series at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, I challenged the participants to write a poem in this format using the holidays as… [Read More]
Eleven Ways of Looking at November
November can be the cruelest month, especially when the end of Daylight Savings Time plunges us suddenly into premature darkness. From then on, it’s a slippery downhill slope for many of us, straight through the holidays and into the New Year when we begin noticing the precious minutes of daylight that beat back the darkness… [Read More]