Tag Archives: poetry

Homesickness by Min

… It is a flying bird without feet but never gets tired It is a strong tree without roots but never turns weak It keeps disturbing wonderful dreams Hence souls wander forever … Min was a student of mine during … Continue reading →

Poetry Lesson: Fog by Carl Sandburg

5 Feb ’12

… What follows is an ESL lesson I use with Fog by Carl Sandburg. I present it from the point of view of a teacher talking. The objective is to get the student writing, and that process is divided into … Continue reading →

Hope is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson: A closer look at and a lesson for an ESL teacher

11 Aug ’11

… I love and yet have mixed feelings about a poem by Emily Dickinson, but it doesn’t stop me from using it in a poetry lesson for students who are learning the English language. I let the class memorize the … Continue reading →

Archive Three: Little Caesar

9 Jun ’11

… I’ve been going through cardboard boxes at my father’s house and have found a lot of old magazines and letters from friends I forgot that I had. Some have not survived the mice. Fresh Paint’s been nibbled on but … Continue reading →

Sonnet 10: for Juan Ramón Jiménez

30 May ’11

… To know the truth we need to talk and read. Two at least must do it, talker talker writer reader revealing things that we already know so absolutely sure of our own selves because somebody else was there to … Continue reading →

Yellow Spring

29 Apr ’11

… APRIL 29, 2003 Here I am, a rainy day in Pennsylvania where I’ve been for ten days visiting my folks. Tomorrow I go back to New York and a lot of work. What a chilly morning. I hope the … Continue reading →

Oaxaca Sketches

25 Apr ’11

… In January of 1995 I traveled in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico working on my novel, stopping to write at various places in detail. I stayed for awhile on the beach at Zipolete where I worked on the book, … Continue reading →

Sonnets 1 – 30

9 Mar ’11

… 1 Looking at the springs, sitting in the sun something at my nape begins to tickle like the wind’s moving a hair there, fickle on my bare neck between the scalp and trunk. I’m reading the poet Bill Kushner—Ah! … Continue reading →

Chapbooks: Words are Birds

21 Dec ’10

… I am making chapbooks of poetry I wrote in the 70s when I was in my 20s. They are out of print. I saw online that someone in England was selling a copy of Poet Laundromat for $200. I’m … Continue reading →

a mouth sewn shut

24 Nov ’10

… I want to begin making little videos of poems that I’ve done. Here is the first one. I wrote it when I was 21. It was for a friend who had put me up for a while and I … Continue reading →

The Storm: Creation of a Poem

10 Sep ’10

… In Wuhan, China, summer of 2008, one stormy evening after my poetry workshop, Richard, a young scientist majoring in Physics, offered to walk me back to the hotel sharing his umbrella in the pouring rain as we made it … Continue reading →

Forget: Beautiful thoughts simply expressed

22 Aug ’10

… Beautiful thoughts aren’t always pretty and neither are beautiful words. At the poetry workshop this summer at Wuhan I’d show two short poems by Alice Notley that were simple to understand. Here is one of them. After Tsang Chih … Continue reading →