writing poetry
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II am back in Minnesota after spending a week with my daughter and son-in-law in Brooklyn. Just a few weeks from Opening Day and we have snow here. I have mentioned here before that I grew up in Montana. When I start complaining about snow this time of year, I try to remind myself that… Read more
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I am back in Brooklyn this week, hanging out with my daughter and son-in-law. I’m spending my time prepping a poetry manuscript and really just wandering. Ultimately, I think I’m trying to center myself after the death of my brother, Paul, last week. I am a wanderer by nature. The best part of traveling for… Read more
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Winter is apparently in no mood to let go of its reign here in the North Country. A snowstorm on Wednesday and cold temperatures have returned to Minnesota—a temporary reminder of what we have just been through. In February, I dialed back my postings here at ClimbingSky. I began spending the time I had freed up starting the… Read more
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The best way to learn about poetry is to read poetry, and to read poets talking about it. With that in mind, over the next month I will be highlighting a number of books that feature poets talking about poetry, beginning with the book Poetry and Ambition: Essays 1982–88 by Donald Hall. The greatest challenge in reviewing… Read more
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[Those who complain about the ambiguity or obscurity of modern poetry] “should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.” ~ W. H. Auden Read more
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More than any poet, I associate Auden with mountains because that is where I first seriously read him. I carried a volume of his selected poems into the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness when I worked trail crew there for the United States Forest Service during summers in the early 1980s. In the evenings, after everyone else went… Read more
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