The snickering blade draws a fine, sharp smile
across the wrinkled surface of my thumb,
and the bread I pursued with all my guile
turns real, running flesh and blood. Numb
with pain, I watch and wait as dark […]

The bird quickly rapped
Against the window, hard,
The azure pane, that false pane.
At least, that’s what others
Told me—I wasn’t
There.
 
When I made it
Outside to see if
It still lived, still moved […]

“Tell me, Wind,”
said Rain, “you
who catches me in
your cool embrace,
what it means to wander,
to wander the world,
to want no direction.”
 
“Simple, Rain,”
said Wind, who
caught its breath.
“So […]

Whenever I’ve asked my students to write a poem, I invariably hear the question, “Where do I start?” My immediate reaction is consternation, plus a certain level of frustration (in case you don’t know, writing […]

Found: a poem, down a dusty old path
that leaves have scraped with many final breaths.
When asked why it lingered so, it laughed
and held onto my arm, and hopped with wreaths
of dry, pressed daisies (all the […]

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment in our three-part series on Harnessing the Power of Poetry, which explores the insights and techniques novelists can glean from poets. You can read the introductory p […]

Mountains are where I’ll lay my head,
And in the ocean’s trench I’ll rest my feet
Till the stars above show me the path I’ve led.
 
The most I do is wonder at what’s said
Among the ruins of some distant, l […]

Poems come in all shapes and sizes. Some are short like blips on a radar screen, provoking a burst of thought in the reader (haiku, for example). Others are long, sweeping songs full of passion, emotion, […]

A glance at the pages of history reveals that poetry is not a young art. Poets from the Greek and Roman epochs were often renowned rhetoricians—their speeches captured the minds, imaginations, and sensibilities o […]