How Mary Oliver Helped Me Live My One Wild and Precious Life
Can a poem change your life? In a word: Yes. I’d been working as a reporter at a small-town newspaper when I heard Mary Oliver read her poetry at Smith College. At the time I’d …
Writing Retreat Day 1: Exiled from the City of Poems
“But poetry — which awakens our senses, frees us from the tyranny of literal meaning and assures us of the credible reality of emotional truth — puts us in touch with something bigger than language, …
Gardening season and its discontents
The poetry of planting a garden–and lines of verse Each summer I imagine that I will spend my days writing and gardening. That’s an idyllic combination – theoretically at least. Sadly, gardening is not my …
First Book: One Thousand and One Nights Worth of Questions
Dreams, Narrative, and The Meaning of Life Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, by Salman Rushdie. (2015, Penguin Random House) In honor of the holiday season, a few weeks back, I had dinner with …
Dream Literacy
Learn the 3 R’s of dreamwork … … and unlock the messages of your subconscious mind The fact that so many people are perplexed by their dreams, tells me that we need to become more literate in …
Losing Sleep Over Dreams
Hold fast to your dreams? On the first night of a weekend Dream Poetry workshop I offered to a group of writers, I suggested the participants try to remember their dreams. I offered them my standard instructions for improving …
Mooning Over the Moon
To moon is to be idle, and in love—it’s been rhapsodized over repeatedly–but could one more ode to that pearl in the night and the dreams it inspires possibly hurt?
The Elusive Dream*
I’m currently at work writing a book about dreams, so the first task is to try to define my terms. What is a dream? And before I even get to page one—I am stuck. The …
Dreams into Poems & Songs
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you dreams, make poems–then sing them. Like many other prolific dreamers, I have journals filled with dream snippets, dream fragments, and more rambling epic dreams …
Converted to Love: A Valentine’s Day Dream Poem
Jewish Girl Takes Communion God says I can. So I do. “The wafer is the body Of love. The wine Its desire.” I eat This body. I drink This blood. My heart Is thus converted. …