WordsonFire – Kathy Boles-Turner

Sitting Still In Traffic: A Blog Post About Writing, Not Driving (Mostly)

Goals. I have them: Friday is the deadline for a chapbook contest. I will be submitting a new and very small collection of found poetry and cento, as well as my usual rambling free verse. My first collection was autobiographical, this second will speak on social issues, particularly crime. I am fascinated by the crimes […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Day-by-Day — A Blog Post About Daily Posts And The Aftermath

How fast did April go by! Possibly for the first time ever, I completed a month-long writing challenge. This is a noteworthy accomplishment, because the writing, and the daily posting coincided with daily reading, in addition to writing for the weekly Brigit’s Flame prompts. April writing was BIG. Now comes the question: is any of […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty-Nine

I Know My Soul, by Claude McKay I plucked my soul out of its secret place, And held it to the mirror of my eye, To see it like a star against the sky, A twitching body quivering in space, A spark of passion shining on my face. And I explored it to determine why […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty-Six

Time, by Louise Glück There was too much, always, then too little. Childhood: sickness. By the side of the bed I had a little bell — at the other end of the bell, my mother. Sickness, gray rain. The dogs slept through it. They slept on the bed, at the end of it, and it […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty-Five

In Praise of Coldness, by Jane Hirshfield “If you wish to move your reader,” Checkhov wrote, “you must write more coldly.” Herakleitos recommended, “A dry soul is best.” And so at the center of many great works is found a preserving dispassion, like the vanishing point of quattrocento perspective, or the tiny packets of desiccant […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty-Four

Secrets, by Kathy Boles-Turner (Revised) The trouble with going behind everyone’s back to eavesdrop and save up juicy little secrets is eventually you’ll discover a doozy — something so dark, so big and threatening that the owner of it would have your head if he knew that you knew. And knowing you, the intoxicating prize […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty-Three

Girl, by Lisa Zaran She said she collects pieces of sky, cuts holes out of it with silver scissors, bits of heaven she calls them. Every day a bevy of birds flies rings around her fingers, my chorus of wives, she calls them. Every day she reads poetry from dusty books she borrows from the […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty-One

When We Look Up, by Denise Levertov He had not looked, pitiful man whom none pity, whom all must pity if they look into their own face (given only by glass, steel, water barely known) all who look up to see-how many faces? How many seen in a lifetime? (Not those that flash by, […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Twenty

Reluctance, by Robert Frost Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended. The leaves are all dead on the ground, Save […]

by Kathy Boles-Turner

Read To Me – Day Nineteen

The Dong With the Luminous Nose (a cento), by John Ashbery Within a windowed niche of that high hall I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks From camp to camp, through the foul womb […]