By Bethany Rohde I’m balancing on the curvature of roots mossed over in unreal green. They carry a familiar bone structure: these rough-skinned, working hands That even now nourish tree flesh in the bluing dark of Monday. I trace one root. It skims grass-shallows, and delves below my sight — to extract its choice elixir:…
Sleek and strong, nourished well on roadside bloodshed, a vulture nestles her egg. ***** Becka Choat is a lifelong lover of words who spends many hours each week in a room of her own, writing or reading and drinking coffee. Her book reviews can be found at http://www.beckasbookreview.wordpress.com, and her poetry and…
By Andrew Lazo The sheer, enormous irony of Lent always strikes me. Did you know that the word that names our longest and most penitential season comes from the Old English for “lengthen”? And so, once again, there go those Christians, denying themselves and carrying around in their bodies the death of Christ, even as…
Art / Courage / Creativity / Faith / Inspiration / Poetry / Reading / Writing
By Doug Jackson Earlier in February, muse Crystal Hurd wrote about her adult discovery of liturgy after a lifetime of the rather frantic freedom of our common Baptist heritage. Pondering her new-found fascination balanced by her new-found ignorance (the only combination, I think, for learning anything), Crystal wrote, “Time and study will remedy this, will…
Courage / Faith / Family / Friendship / Inspiration / Poetry / Reading
By Crystal Hurd I am a recent “convert,” if you wish to call it that. Not to Christianity, of course. I was born and raised in the south, where Christianity is as popular as iced tea and Elvis and SEC football. I grew up a Baptist and have experienced it in its many forms. My…
One of the saddest, most moving poems of man’s wanton destruction of natural beauty is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Binsey Poplars.” These now-famous trees had lined the River Thames as it passes by the village of Binsey, in Oxfordshire, but in 1879, they were cut down – a sorry blow indeed: My aspens dear, whose airy…
We’re a hardy lot here in New England. Last week we saw blizzard, “historic” snowfall, then another foot (meh, what’s 12 inches after 3 feet?), mixed with rain, freezing rain, and sleet. They’re talking about more to come tomorrow. Lovely. We hunker down. We make do. Like The Inside Chance, the first poem in Marge…
Recently my many-times-published author husband and I were having a conversation that only would happen between two married people who are also both writers. It was a conversation about words and definitions, about the wide range of definitions out there for words like “writer” and “author,” and who gets to call themselves what. I started…
By Andrew Lazo Here for your reading (and writing) enjoyment, I humbly offer: Twelve Tips to Try, A Pair of Practices to Avoid Try Some of These: Face it–writing is a hard and painful process, and costs lifeblood to do it, not to mention to do it well, to say nothing of the torture-rack of…
By Bethany Rohde I’ve been collecting these water pockets of new histories Distilling cold fronts into a leather-bound canteen A predominant wind has exposed my skin here in the trampled grass A single downward stroke. ******* A writer from the great state of Washington, Bethany Rohde received her BA in English Studies from Western Washington…
On January 1, Doug pointed out to us that we had just been presented with 365 ‘unwritten squares of opportunity.’ I don’t think it matters all that much whether we take those squares to be blocks on our calendars, blank pages in our notebooks or photo albums, or leaves in the ‘book of our lives.’…
Remember My 500 Words challenge? I thought I’d give you all an update on how that’s going. Mostly good. I’ve only missed two days out of seventeen, and each day I’ve exceeded (by a smidge) the 500 target. Which means I’ve written well over 7500 words since January 1st. Given my complete lack of daily…
By Crystal Hurd The winter winds are blowing outside, making a few old leaves tumble over themselves. Remnants of an expired year. Watch as they slowly exit, like refuse being swept by Nature’s broom, out of your vision. There is something beautiful and cathartic about it. The old year scurrying away as the new year…
Doug’s audacious challenge to face the blank page nudged me to take up My 500 Words. In a nutshell, it’s a challenge to write 500 words every day for 31 days. That’s it. Sure, 500 words. I can do that. So, what’s the big deal, and why am I doing this? I’ll start with the…
by Doug Jackson “Audacity,” Winston Churchill exhorted amateur painters, “is the only ticket.” The same thing may be said to budding writers. The blank page simultaneously sneers, fears, and hopes. That combination can freeze the hand a half-inch from its surface. At this season we face the biggest blank page of all, three hundred and…
