Photography and digital magic: H.J. McEnroe
In the 1946 book, Confessions of a Story Writer, Paul Gallico wrote: "It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader."
A peculiar truth about my writing history is the trove of poems, long and short, accumulated over a lifetime of crafting poetry. I say, "crafting," because the act of writing a good poem of substance requires stripping away all that is not essential to the message. Or, as my grad school mentor would, on occasion, say: "Writing a good poem is damn hard work." That truth has remained with me over the years, compelling me to resurrect many of these poems from a burlap bag in which they were stored over the last 40 years.
As I share these poems, one at a time, I revisit, rewrite, and "open more veins" to bleed them correctly, truthfully onto the page. These poems, I've dubbed -- for better or worse -- 'Poems from the Burlap Vault.' This is my first such offering from that 'Vault.'
A peculiar truth about my writing history is the trove of poems, long and short, accumulated over a lifetime of crafting poetry. I say, "crafting," because the act of writing a good poem of substance requires stripping away all that is not essential to the message. Or, as my grad school mentor would, on occasion, say: "Writing a good poem is damn hard work." That truth has remained with me over the years, compelling me to resurrect many of these poems from a burlap bag in which they were stored over the last 40 years.
As I share these poems, one at a time, I revisit, rewrite, and "open more veins" to bleed them correctly, truthfully onto the page. These poems, I've dubbed -- for better or worse -- 'Poems from the Burlap Vault.' This is my first such offering from that 'Vault.'