Goose Hill

On Thursday, I realized another poetry life-goal: Fairy Tale Review accepted my poem "Dorothy" for publication in their Emerald Issue , due out in March 2014.  This is one of my absolute FAVORITE lit mags and I have been submitting to them for five years now. So I have reached another small landmark in my poetry-life. I would go so far as to say that this is equally as exciting to me as my chapbook acceptance earlier this year. I am oh-so-happy! P.S. I signed my first ever poem contract to give FTR permission to publish "Dorothy." What a strange, happy threshold I've crossed.

Heloise, my Underwood Standard No. 4, has a brand-new cozy and a fresh ink ribbon. She is ready to go for Saturday's type-in & letter-writing social at the fifth annual Chestertown Book Festival ! We'll be typing letters and making mail art from 10:00 a.m. to noon at Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Saturday, September 21 alongside the Book Makers' Exhibition. See you there!

Right now, it's: 1. The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales   2. Transformations , by Anne Sexton 3. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat , by Oliver Sacks  A lot of the poems I write are collages of what I'm reading. I'll take a few pieces from one book, a few pieces from another, and maybe even a piece from one more. Then I throw them into my poem-cauldron, stir them up a bit, and those chemical reactions create a new poem-story. Familiar characteristics are recombined to make a new whole. The list of books above are helping me with a poem that re-imagines the classic Grimm tale, "The Maiden Without Hands." Key to this re-vision of the traditional story is what I learned from reading the title story of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat . Scientific anecdotes are, by far, my favorite way into the writing of a poem. Research is such an essential (not to mention, fun) part of the writing process. Whatever I'm reading ends up becoming a pa...