for the readers, writers, and learners
Waiting on a critique of my writing caused me anxiety last October. I had built up the courage to submit the poems to an online program called The Bridge by Brooklyn Poets. I regretted submitting them for critique within the hour of sending them. I wondered what the poetry editor would think of my work […]
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My gratitude practice started simple. I listed one by one all of the things I was grateful for. Then it became more descriptive, more intentional. Now, when I write about what I’m grateful for, I explore in detail why I’m grateful. I challenge myself to describe how what I’m grateful for makes an impact in […]
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I am burning my journals. I’m lying. I’m actually going to shred them because I don’t have a backyard to burn them in. I thought I’d never do it. Shred the 12 years worth of notebooks and journals I’ve been lugging. They’re full of poems, pages with tear marks, to-do lists, magazine cut outs, goals, […]
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Do you choose a word to set the tone for the new year? I don’t remember where I found this tradition of picking a word as the theme for a new year. But I love the simplicity of it compared the complexity of creating a list of goals. As I prepare to wrap up my […]
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My goal has always been to produce the type of writing that people want to read in the morning. I want to develop a writing style that sets a tone of hope or gratitude or strength for the day, so that readers look forward to reading my work at any time of the day. When […]
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I found the following lines in Louise Gluck’s poem “Echoes” from her book Averno: “From our kitchen garden / you could see the mountains, / snow covered, even in summer. / I remember peace of a kind / I never knew again. / Somewhat later, I took it upon myself / to become an artist, / to […]
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When I was in high school, I carried poetry notebooks that I made all of my friends read. When I read most of them now, I can tell how I felt in those poems, but I have no idea what I was talking about in some of them. I was very dramatic about everything. Actually, I still find […]
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Learning came easy to me, so I thought it would be easy for me teach others. I knew I had the patience to be a teacher and inspired by my elementary school teacher, I became one. Little did I know that just as I could change the world for better, I can also change the […]
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I share poetry lines that move me and why they move me in this poetry series called “These Lines.” I am still reading The Carrying by Ada Limon, so lines from her poems made it to this series again. I hate the world, the pain of it that circles in us, that makes us […]
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Thursday, August 30, 2018 University On Wednesday I attended class at university after a long day at work. I questioned my decision to take the two courses I signed up for because I was already tired by the time the class started. Today, I read a few pages of an assigned chapter, and I don’t […]
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