I have a longstanding obsession with silence. Perhaps it’s not that longstanding. I became aware of silence in graduate school. I began to focus on how a poet’s lines interacted with the white space and the silence. It became – and still is – a point of consideration in my own work.
Paul Celan
This is Sparta: Inspiration, Creativity, and the Writing Life
One of the most memorable scenes in 300 occurs when King Leonidas yells, “This is Sparta!” He then promptly kicks the Persian messenger down a cavernous well. Chaos ensues; the Spartans kill the remaining Persian messengers. The scene seems somewhat illogical unless one is a Spartan (Shouldn’t the Spartans have allowed one of the messengers to survive?), but the sentiment of the king’s cry and act is all too familiar.*
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Write Right: Summer Reading
Eight Poets for Communicators
Spin Sucks has been having entirely too much fun celebrating fiction. I’ve enjoyed the celebration – I enjoy fiction – but I feel as though poets and poetry need some attention. Thus, I’m writing my own post about poetry and posting it here.
Hurting the Dear Ones
When I started to take my writing and my role as a writer seriously, I neglected one teeny-tiny detail: I inevitably was going to hurt those closest to me. I didn’t realize this truth until I allowed some family members to read a couple of my early poems, and they responded with both hurt feelings and concern. It was at that point I had to make a decision. Would I continue writing and risk hurting my dear ones or would I cease and desist from my writing?