Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 2
Prompt: Write an outsider poem. You can be the outsider; someone else can be the outsider; or it can even be an animal or inanimate object that’s the outsider. HEARTBURN She wears it on her sleeve because it does not fit in her chest, too full of life to be contained, much too easy to
Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 1
Prompt: Write an origin poem. It can be the origin of a word, person, plant, idea, etc. METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING Pen, pencil, paper, notebook, Moleskine, laptop, iPhone, quiet park, café table, noisy bar, bathroom stall, lower back, scarred wrist, broken heart… A poem is not truly alive until it is read out loud for someone else to
2009 Poem-A-Day Challenge
April is National Poetry Month, so it’s a perfect opportunity to live up to my URL and flashback to the late 90s when I worked at The Academy of American Poets and was terrorizing the NYC poetry slam scene! I’ve attempted National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) twice, cranking out 15,000 words on the second try,
Garden Photography, Writing and Planthropology
I went to the Frelinghuysen Arboretum a few weeks ago to check out Ken Druse give a presentation of his amazing new book, Planthropology: The Myths, Mysteries, and Miracles of My Garden Favorites, and took my wife’s fancy new camera with me to take pictures. After the presentation, I wandered the snow-covered grounds of the Arboretum and
Submissions: Know Your Market… and Medium
The most basic advice usually given to writers looking to submit their work to magazines or literary journals is to know the market, aka read the guidelines and pick up a few issues before wasting your time and the editors’ by sending something that’s totally inappropriate for a publication. With the increasing popularity of online-only
Free Chapbook: Crazy White Devil
It’s been years since I created a chapbook. Six, to be exact. I released Selected Squares of Concrete — a de facto “best of” poetry collection of new, revised, never-before-released and old favorites — back in March of 2003, smack in the middle of the razor-thin slice of time between my return to the NYC
Random Reviews: Inkheart, Wanted, Chalk
We’ve been having a lot of Blockbuster nights since we bought the house last summer, while managing to catch whatever kid-friendly movies worth seeing in theaters whenever possible, and I’ve been reviewing a lot of them on Flixster but wanted to round up the most recent batch and post them here, including expanded commentary on
Outrage, Humor, Context
David Brothers was one of the smartest comics bloggers on the scene a few years back when I was at my peak of following the industry, and he’s remained one of the few whom I still follow despite my current pull list being a shadow of its former self. [Side note: Have to get to
Why Your Book Will Never Be in Borders
The odds are pretty slim, and not just because they’re on the verge of going out of business: “I market books for a living, so I can tell you an unpleasant truth: the order for any book, from any account, starts at zero,” [Andrew Wheeler, a marketing manager at Wiley] warns. “The publisher’s sales rep
Thrillerfest 2008
Thrillerfest kicked off yesterday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel here in New York and I had the pleasure of attending the full day — I’ll be back tonight and most of Saturday — meeting some great people, picking up some interesting books, and taking in some insightful information on the publishing game from the perspective