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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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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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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I decided to become consistent on this blog as a way of taking my writing seriously. Even though writing has never been my life’s main priority, my life always leads back to writing. I can stop writing for days or weeks, but sooner or later my preference of creative outlet is writing. The […]
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This is a poetry series in which I share poetry lines that move me and why they move me. The following lines are from The Carrying by Ada Limon. What if I want to go devil instead? Bow down to the madness that makes me. from “Last Summer After a Panic Attack” I think that all […]
Read MoreI walked through my local art museum a couple weeks ago and saw a Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro collection. I was struck by seeing drafts of the same etchings side by side. I expected to only see the final versions. The information box said that the artists, “gave their working process much […]
Read MoreAs improbable as some may seem, here are my writer dreams besides being on bestseller lists. Be the half of a well-known literary couple like Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi, Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. (A girl can dream.) Have a room with a view in the house the is […]
Read MoreI was standing in front of an arrangement of roses with my uncle. We’d been in the dining room when I asked him if he had a simple piece of advice for me to find inner peace. When we stood in front of these flowers, he started telling me something important about the reason flowers […]
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