This is about two kinds of space – the spacing of poems on the page, and the space we live in. I’m respectful of the spacing a writer uses, especially a poet’s use of line and space. In class I always nag my students to make real paragraphs, not like the ones I’m using in…
Fooling Around with Poems
Fooling Around with Poems, Inspiration
Love Letter To Students
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
I’m teaching an advanced Non-fiction class this quarter at UCLA Extension and I’d like to tell my students how much I love them. (Actually I tell them this all the time, but I want to do it in public today.) There are twelve students in the class and each reads his or her work for…
Fooling Around with Poems
Finding Poems
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
Poems can come out of the blue. Literally. Early this morning I found a poem on the beach. I was just walking along with Nelson like I do every morning and two women passed who were speaking Italian. I thought how much I loved the sound of that language. And then I noticed the ocean…
Fooling Around with Poems
Thanksgiving Poem
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
"Thanks" is the poem I'm reading to my class this morning. (I always read a poem at the beginning of every class I teach.) My thought on poetry is that it either hits you in the heart or doesn't. Poems don't need intellectual understanding – though that can deepen your appreciation of the poem later.…
Fooling Around with Poems, Inspiration
“Cat In An Empty Apartment”
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1996, died this week. (Her obit is in this morning's L.A. Times – 2/3/12 – and in yesterday's N.Y. Times.) I have two of her books, View With a Grain of Sand; Selected Poems and Monologue of a Dog, and I've been sitting…
Fooling Around with Poems
April 29, 2010: Poems for Your Pockets
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 4 Comments
Go to poetnews@poets.org and check out all the hoopla over Poem In Your Pocket Day. What poem are you going to carry in your pocket tomorrow? I've got a whole bag of them I'm bringing up to Lake Arrowhead for the retreat this weekend. "Eagle Poem" by Joy Hajo, "Creature on Fire" by Brian…
Fooling Around with Poems
Perfect Poem for Poetry Month
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 6 Comments
I just rediscovered this poem in my notebooks. Thank you Ann Gould for sending it to the blog last year during Poetry Month. And thank you Pamela Spiro Wagner for writing it. How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual by Pamela Spiro Wagner First, forget everything you have learned, that poetry is difficult, that it cannot be…
Fooling Around with Poems
Poetry Week
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 3 Comments
Here we are in the middle of National Poetry Month (April) and not a word about it on this blog. (My silence has been due to a frenzy of work – trying to catch up after being gone for most of March.) There are two sites you can sign up for a poem a…
Fooling Around with Poems
A Poem for Writers
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 4 Comments
KITES OF EXPECTATION become anchors of habit until, lightened of the weight of our need, they fly once more – James DePreist (FYI: This poem is supposed to be single spaced but TypePad insists on double spacing it. My apologies to the poet. Spacing really matters in poetry.)
Fooling Around with Poems
Searching: The Perfect Poem
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 10 Comments
Sometimes the perfect poem comes along. "Searchers" by Jim Harrison was sent to me by my friend and student Elizabeth Aquino last week the day after I wrote the post about Charlotte searching and grieving for Stuart. Searchers by Jim Harrison At dawn Warren is on my bed,a ragged lump of fur listeningto the birds as if…
