Online Exclusives
John Adames’ Writing Space
The most interesting aspect of my writing space is a comfortable couch where I meditate before writing or revising my poems. I am a huge fan of Eckhart Tolle and every morning listen to one of his guided meditations that help to still the mind and allow for creative thoughts to come from a deeper place of pure […]
Deepa Rajagopalan’s Writing Space
Orhan Pamuk said in an interview with the Paris Review that he thought that the place where he sleeps, should be different from the place where he writes. That the domestic rituals and details kill his imagination, and so he always had a little place outside the house. I sometimes imagine having a space like […]
Finding the Form with Janice McCrum
For me writing starts with an image I can’t get rid of, or a group of words that keep repeating themselves and won’t let me be. I have no idea where I’m going when I put the image into words, or when I record the line that’s almost become a mantra in my head. But […]
Finding the Form with Alexander Hollenberg
The germ of “Surgeon’s Knot” came, from all places, a lecture I was delivering on Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. If there’s one central, broken-record theme to all my teaching, it’s this: think hard about the relationship between form and content. On this particular day I was making my case for Pope’s sophisticated […]
Megan Callahan’s Writing Space
I once had a creative writing teacher who said he could write anywhere, as long as he had a window. At the time, I nodded and thought, of course! Who could write without a swatch of sky? A dusty sunbeam or street-side view? It seemed intuitive, somehow, that my creativity would be stunted without these […]
Finding the Form with William Ross
Our family, a Caucasian father, a Chinese mother and two mixed-race children, is fortunate to take part in the annual holidays and celebrations of two cultures. For example, we enjoy two different New Year celebrations. One occurs on the last day of December and the first day of January according to the Gregorian calendar. The […]
Of pantsers, plotters, and being of use
I want to be a plotter. Oh, how I want to be a plotter. In the way I want my car to stay clean or to keep my spice drawer organized, I want to be a plotter. Each time I start a new project, I delude myself with an outline and visions of stepwise arguments, […]
What’s John Adames Reading?
The death of Louise Glück this year and her winning the Nobel Prize prompted me to reread two volumes of her poetry – The Wild Iris and The Seven Ages – that I had purchased many years ago from the famous City Lights Books in San Francisco. One of my favorite poems from The Seven […]
Finding the Form with Susan J. Atkinson
Kiss Me Again Like The Second Time was one of those rare gems of a poem that start with a tiny spark that instantly ignites and the next thing you know the spark has exploded into a full blown fire or, in this case, a poem. I’d been reading a New York Bestseller Rom-Com, which […]
Finding the Form with Bobbie Jean Huff
I wrote what would become my short story “Generations” many years ago. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my writing then, but I knew enough to realize that it wasn’t any good. A story about a garden party? Who cares! When I first started writing, I focused on poetry. I’d never considered writing […]