Volume XLV
“I would recommend that someone who wants to get published read as many issues of an many journals as possible & submit, submit, submit their work. I set a goal of submitting my poetry to one hundred journals every year, breaking it down into sending out so many every month & every week to keep on track.”
“Be you in your work. I see myself as a student for life when it comes to my writing and painting. Understand that your experiences can be colored and crafted just as beautifully as those we look up to. Be you in your work and the authenticity will manifest into people wanting to read and hear your work because they will likely see themselves your truth. “
Read More“I would recommend that someone who wants to get published read as many issues of an many journals as possible & submit, submit, submit their work. I set a goal of submitting my poetry to one hundred journals every year, breaking it down into sending out so many every month & every week to keep on track.”
Read More“My advice for young writers and I guess young people, in general, would be to persist. I just left a job that made me unhappy and moved across the country to pursue this writing thing—again. I think it’s okay to fail, and it’s also okay to pursue what will make you happy.”
Read More“They’re memoir, but they’re subject driven, and the whole thing is just that when I start these books, I’m as ignorant as most of the audience, or maybe a lot of them more knowledgeable than I am. But the whole thing is a journey into a subject and the transformation that takes place is the knowledge that’s acquired as you go, and all literature is based on transformation.”
Read More“Storytelling has always been a huge part of my life, and I have been lucky enough to live in nature-dominated locations and explore the wilderness from a young age. The two things, nature and stories, have been the most defining and important things to me, so they naturally went hand in hand. As I've grown up, I have paired that with my concern for the growing climate crisis and my environmental education.”
Read More“Tell them to read, read, read—not to imitate but to assimilate. They should write about everything from aardvarks to zebras and all that’s left in between. Their terrain should be from Angola to Zimbabwe. They should keep notebooks because memory cannot be trusted. Like Bill Stafford, they should know the difference between a nibble and a bite. Like Whitman, they must contain multitudes and shout their barbaric yawp across the rooftops.”
Read More“In this collection I wanted to accept that those things just are and that those things do not have to define me and that those things, while unfortunate, helped me become who I am today. And that's why this concept of “accepting things you cannot change” it so important. It gives you peace at night, it gives you grace, and most importantly the will to move forward.”
Read More“The earliest influences on me were probably in many ways the strongest for a long time. There was a brief period as when I was an undergraduate when I thought that James Dickey’s way of writing poems was the only way that was worthwhile. And he was very kind about that and tried to explain to me that I probably had my own voice somewhere, and that I ought to be bearing down on finding it.”
Read More“I’m drawn to forms, constraints, patterning, and rules—including the secret, strange rules I make up, like a pattern of assonance nobody may see but me. I love the way these constraints elicit the most unexpected language and content.”
Read More“We [science fiction writers] are the court jesters of literature. We can say very truthful, very scathing commentaries on our society and no one really takes us seriously.”
Read More“The way I am finding balance is by accepting that I am not able to write as much as I would like to at the moment, and forgiving myself for that. I have to remind myself that being a poet is a permanent part of who I am, not a membership that will disappear if I don’t meet some imaginary quota of poems per month.”
Read More“The images I most associate with my uncle are, of course, his tattoos, so I used them as a jumping off point to begin writing about his life, his illness, and his death.”
Read More“Writing ‘Limbo’ required copious amounts of research and numerous drafts. Early drafts were written in third-person narration until I realized that only through first-person would the story convey the urgency and intimacy this confessional narrative deserved.”
Read More“[W]hen it comes to writing, I think amusing yourself is incredibly important. I'm very much for self-indulgence. Often when you do the thing that you really want to do the most, it’s the thing that you think no one will like, right? Because it's so weird that only you like it. But in my experience, that will often have the most reach and touch the most people.”
Read More“When I am a guest author at colleges, most of the students I meet with are Latinx and often represent the first generation in their families to go to college. I often say to them that our stories are important. I then ask them: What would happen if we did not write our stories? And they always get it right: If we don’t write our stories, someone else will, and they will get them wrong.”
Read More“For me, form matters a lot and the value of "how to say" is not less than "what to say." We Iranians share an expression saying "fit a sea in a cup" and to me, writing short poems corresponds to this expression.”
Read More“Having my mom or my fiancé read a piece I've written and hearing them laugh from another room is what I imagine heroin feels like. Totally worth imploding your life over.”
Read More“Take your time to learn deeply and well. Most of all, enjoy the process!”
Read More“Complacency never leads to anything cool or new.”
Read More“In the past, when asked for a poem, I’d write fifty. That is how I wrote books on Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Blue Tattoo, and refugees.”
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