What happened to the elusive writer? It wasn’t that long ago – thirty, maybe forty years ago – when writers could be mysterious, anonymous, hidden behind pen names and pseudonyms. There was a certain mystery to some authors, like Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger. Familiar names, but most everything else about them was unknown. Nowadays,…
Category: Poetry
Traditional Vs. Non-Traditional
When I was a younger man (which wasn’t THAT long ago, thank you very much), it was harder for a writer to get published than it is today. Commercial print magazines and traditional publishing houses ruled the writing world. Your average fiction writer had to comb through the newsstands to find magazines that might be…
Words and Images
There’s something to be said for the way words and images compliment each other. They’ve been partners for thousands of years. In fact, some of the earliest writing was simply pictures. So, in a way, images gave birth to words. I think that images can add another level of depth to a story or poem….
Returning to Old Favorites
I have this weird habit – at least, I think it’s weird – in that I have an urge to reread books. Specifically, certain books that had an impact on my life, influenced me in some way, or were just so amazingly written that I can’t get enough. A few titles come to mind –…
An Amazing Gift
I recently received such a thoughtful and amazing gift that I had to share. An artist who listens to one of my podcasts was inspired by the episode I did on poetry. So much so that she asked people on Twitter to submit haiku so she could pick one or two and create an image…
The Prometheus Project Podcast, Ep 27, is Available!
In this episode I discuss the magic and power of poetry, how we can learn from it, and how we can make it more relatable to younger readers. And I even read a few stanzas of Walt Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric. The podcast is available at iTunes, GooglePlay, Spotify, and PodBean. Or if you…
A Poetry Moment III
I equate poems to paintings. They are short – usually one page – and they form a specific image or feeling in your mind. I think they can also be more difficult to write than prose. The writer has to be very precise with their words, much like a painter with their brush on the…
A Poetry Moment II
My last Poetry Moment post received positive feedback on social media, so I thought I’d do another one. This round I’m going to share another of my published poems, “Suburbia”. This was published alongside “The Breakup” in a literary magazine called The Eyrie back in 1996. When I reread it earlier I realized that it…
A Poetry Moment
I wrote a lot of poetry when I was younger. I was inspired by both actual poets and song lyrics. On the poetry side there was Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, and Lewis Carroll. On the song lyric side there was Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and The Beatles. There were others in both camps, but far…