It’s National Poetry Month and the Poetry Friday Community is once again joining forces to write a community poem, one line a day, traveling from blog to blog. Thanks to Margaret Simon for organizing the progressive poem. This year’s poem, entitled The Land of Poetry, inspired Tabatha Yeatts to draw a map of our journey. […]

Marcie Flinchum Atkins is hosting Poetry Friday today. In celebration of her new picture book, When Twilight Comes, Marcie asked bloggers to post a twilight photo with a twilight poem. The book’s birthday is this Tuesday, and I’m eager to read it (and wow–it’s earned three starred reviews!) I often take our kayak out for […]

It’s been an anxious time at my house, and I’m happy that it’s in the rearview mirror. In January I got an unexpected melanoma diagnosis and had surgery three weeks ago. Last week I received the wonderful news that the pathology exam found no metastasis. Other than frequent check-ups for the next few years, I […]

Welcome to Poetry Friday! I’m happy to host the post-Thanksgiving parade. I hope you enjoyed a delicious meal with family and/or friends if you celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. And speaking of family, I am thrilled to host my cousin Suzy Levinson today! I first “met” Suzy many years ago during Ed Decaria’s March Madness poetry competition. […]

Happy meteorological summer! I am happy to host today’s Poetry Friday. Please leave your link with Mr. Linky at the end of this post. I am trying to get back on the proverbial horse and commit to a more regular writing schedule. There are a few practices that usually help me be more productive. First […]

Happy National Poetry Month! I have been fortunate to attend a couple of poetry workshops this month as part of the Jax Poetry Fest (peruse here–you can still sign up for these free lunchtime workshops.) I especially enjoyed my friend Shutta Crum’s workshop on writing narrative poetry. Shutta offered some great examples of narrative poetry–poems […]

Welcome to the progressive poem!  Each year during the month of April, the kidlit poetry community comes together to create a poem, with each blogger contributing one line before handing it off to the next intrepid poet. The progressive poem was originally the brain-child of Irene Latham, and now Margaret Simon organizes this effort. Thanks to both […]

Today was a good mail day–I found a copy of Matt Forrest Esenwine’s new treasure, A UNIVERSE OF RAINBOWS, on my doorstep (thank you Eerdmans Books for offering a review copy!) The book features a wide variety of rainbows, including those made by light and water, those found on animals and plants, rainbows in rocks, […]

If you are a frequenter of Poetry Friday, you likely know that the Poetry Sisters share poems on a theme once a month, and invite others to join them. This month’s challenge was to write a poem inspired by Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” I confess that I did not write […]

We had out-of-town friends visiting on Sunday, and took them to the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary (only a few miles from our house as the goose flies.) A pair of trumpeter swans had three almost-full-grown cygnets at the back pond, away from the honking geese, the ever-present mallards, and other water fowl. Our friends sprung for […]