Clik here to view.
Writing: Where I’ve Been — A Writer’s Best Friend: The Faithful Editor
Writers complain about editors as reliably as the sun also rises. Here’s my secret: how I learned to be happy in a world full of editors. After all, I’ve been writing for fifty years. I could do...
View ArticleHow to Write A Poem: The Snake Within
When I’m having trouble writing, one of my favorite methods to start the process is to write a “How To” poem. This is probably why there are zillions of the things floating around, but that doesn’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blacksmith or Wordsmith: Time, Patience, Skill, Artistry
At the basement entrance to our house stands our Iron Wall, a retaining barrier covered with old rusty tools. The wall is a stack of railroad ties linked by rebar to hold the earth from the hillside...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Creating a Cowboy Poem: How Buzzards Turned into Priests
Vultures on a neighbor’s barn. In honor of National Cowboy Poetry Week, April 19 to 25, I’m looking at how I created one of my few rhyming poems, “Priests of the Prairie” (2004). My first intention was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Birds of Spring
Slog, slog, slog. Step by step I plodded through the deep mud of the calving corral, pushing a stumbling newborn calf and his mother through the falling snow into the barn where the baby could get dry...
View Article