Ken Craft Poetry
Before I say a reluctant goodbye to Peter Orner's book, Am I Alone Here?, that has been such good company these past three days, I thought I'd share a few final quotes I marked in the book. Six are from Orner himself, and three are ones he fished from Frank O'Connor's book, The Lonely Voice (and …
Continue reading “Fiction Isn’t Machinery, It’s Alchemy.”
Every writer is a reader, and every reader indulges himself now and then in a good "reading about reading" book. This is where I'm at now as I amble through Peter Orner's Am I Alone Here? (The answer is, Clearly not, P.O.!) The thing about reading-about-reading books is how expensive they can be. No, I don't …
Continue reading The Humbling Beauty in Reading-About-Reading Books
One Sunday ritual I enjoy is reading The Book Review in the New York Times, where I can reliably find a feature called "By the Book." In this column, famous people (mostly authors, but sometimes actors, singers, artists, etc.) answer pre-submitted questions about their reading habits, prejudices, and insights. For me, "By the Book" is …
Continue reading Reading the New York Times’ “By the Book” Feature
As a writer, it can be liberating to no longer feel the pressure to create something new. You know the voice: "Hey, you. Mr. Writer. It's been a few days (weeks, months) since you wrote anything new. What kind of writer do you call yourself, anyway?" A smart one, if you plow more writing time …
In reading essays in Robert A. Caro's Working, I was struck by the unanticipated similarities between fiction, nonfiction, and yes, even poetry writing. Apparently Caro was, too, else why would he write this: "The importance of a sense of place is commonly accepted in the world of fiction; I wish that were also true about …
This Memorial Day weekend, I've been poking around Robert Caro's new book, Working. In the introduction, I came across an interesting anecdote and a phrase I took a shining to. Caro (pictured above as a young man) talks about his Princeton days when he was taking a Creative Writing course with the literary critic and …
Sometimes it feels like you're faced with an everyday dilemma of rock or hard place, devil or deep blue sea, Scylla or Charybdis. You know what I'm talking about: poetry or citizenship. A steady diet of the news, it seems, is good for becoming an informed citizen (something all countries of the world need today, …
Did you know that Super Bowl Monday---the day following the N.F.L.'s championship game---is the most called-in sick day in the United States? Talk about the tail (football) wagging the dog (country)! As for those going to work, they will no doubt burn some water-cooler time discussing the merits of Super Bowl commercials, even to the point …
When I read poetry books, I often keep an open notebook beside me so I can copy down a few words or lines that teach me the craft of good poetry. It's better than highlighting a book, because the act of handwriting gives the brain a better work-out than mere coloring. Yes, the words are …
Yesterday morning, I wrote a "little poem." You won't find that in a glossary of poetry terms, of course, because "little" is fraught with multiple meanings. Think of a little apartment, for instance. For one prospective renter, it's "cramped," and for the next, it's "cozy." In the poetry world, the Kingdom of Little Poetry can …
