Notes on My Week at the Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire, August through August 9, 2014. Here I am at the Frost Place near Franconia, New Hampshire deep into poetry with a few dozen other participants. A kind of low-key Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference with Patrick Donnelly as the organizer. Donnelly gave his talk last […]

I recently reread Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed on Westminster Bridge,” written in 1802, and memorized the poem so I could share it with a friend on our walks along Pt. Isabel on the San Francisco Bay, with its clear view of other bridges–both the Gold Gate and the new, sparkling Bay Bridge across the water. Reciting […]

Two Poems from A.R. Ammons’ Brink Road “. . . as for writing, why, it’s like walking, you aren’t working but you aren’t doing nothing:” –A.R. Ammons (“Summer Place”) The poem “Play” is another of A.R. Ammons’ gems, this one from his book Brink Road (1996), which follows his more famous book Garbage, written in […]

Thanks to Ann E. Michael for inviting me to go on the Blog Tour. I’ve enjoyed the poems in Ann’s book Water-Rites every since I picked up a copy at AWP in Boston in 2013. That’s also where Ann and I met and began our correspondence. So here is the magical mystery tour of my […]