voice | voice
Dec.16.2009
In the early eighties, fresh with an MFA in creative writing, I joined Prelude Press as its senior editor, and we put out computer books by one person, Peter McWilliams. I was one of seventeen people working for Peter. With a very active mind and a huge entrepreurial will, Peter started out...
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Dec.04.2009
New Bloomsbury Review arrives with my interview with Ellen Bass, cover "Holding the Human Line, A Conversation With Ellen Bass." Sample:
RS - Do you feel you've created a persona? There is an authenticity to the poems in both Mules of Love and The Human Line, and I personally feel I am...
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Nov.25.2009
A while back, fellow author Patricia Stoltey mentioned seeing some cow street art in Colorado. I was reminded of a LizArt project here in Orlando some years ago, in which artists created sculptures using basic lizard "templates."
As I Googled my way to digging up what I could find on the...
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Oct.09.2009
I’ve had a couple of recent queries about first person v. third person. Maybe I’ll tackle them in my blog. I’d bloody well do something in my blog if I’m to hold up my head as a content creator. And what, after all, was a writer if not the ur-content creator?
She’d had a couple of recent queries...
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Sep.29.2009
Is the reason the drum resonates so much with my being is that not only does it echo my heart beat, or what my heart beat could be, but because it is probably one of the oldest, most raw musical instruments—one of the oldest forms of expression, along with the human voice? The deep bum-bum, bum-...
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Sep.16.2009
Cowboys don't talk like artists, who don't talk like sailors, who don't talk like politicians. And men don't talk like women, no matter what job each has. When I write my male characters' dialogue, I always go back and cut it down by at least 25%.
I recall reading my first book by a best-selling...
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Aug.18.2009
E. J. Barnes “It’s easier to get away with fiction in poetry if it’s clearly science-fiction, fantasy, or set in a historic period.
I’m reminded of a story published some years ago called “The Man Who Planted Trees”. It got turned into a half-hour “short” animated film. It was just such a...
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Jun.20.2009
The title of this column is the last line of the title of the last column.
It’s by Ana Hatherly, a Portuguese poet, who works primarily in the prose poem.
Her entire prose poem reads;
Once upon a time there was a land where there weren't any clouds.
To make rain, it was necessary to wash...
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Mar.30.2009
Never having owned a beagle, when people asked if puppy Nemo had found his voice, I found the question odd. Yes, Nemo growled, and barked--or something that passed for one. And sometimes, Nemo even howled. This last was charming, a serenade similar to the one our Australian Shepherd used to warble...
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Feb.25.2009
The title of this post is a quote from a conversation with a wonderful coach named Sharon Sayler (check out her radio show), and I think it’s the perfect description of what writing demands of us.
Someone was saying to me this week that it’s not the writing she minds, but the voice in her head that...
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