It’s a book about living and loving and losing and being human through all of it—thank you for helping me accept more of my own humanity. —Cami Kasmerchak I’ve often noticed how many readers recognize…
Sunday 21 June 2015 Dear Isabel Page 2, paragraph 1 About your “fear of rejection”: Do you have a “fear of attraction” as well? I wonder how many people fell in love with you in…
There is a notion of “passing it on,” that simple. One to one. Elder to younger perhaps. That “poetry is news,” that the inspiration for any work you do and the work you do as…
1. Natalie Goldberg: I also place on the altar a photo of Allen Ginsberg in a yellow wood frame, sitting in a white shirt, cross-legged, his face captured in an uncanny smile. He is our…
“Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world…
Later this summer at Cafe Ventana, I’ll be facilitating a reading group of the new book, The Essential Ginsberg. I was just rereading Bill Morgan’s history, The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat…
Have you ever tried to email chicken soup?Diane di Prima The Poetry Deal—It’s only 109 pages. But Diane di Prima—poet, printer, feminist, Buddhist, anarchist, pacifist, cultural revolutionary— packs a lot of life into those pages….
The thing is to get under the students’ skin and arouse enough enthusiasm that they get under their own skin. This means allowing yourself to be yourself in class. My own best teachers were WC…
Like Sontag and Beseda, many of us are tempted to be intolerant of the ambiguity and intimidated by the risks of photography and other art forms. Ultimately, I believe we are most daunted by the…
Dear Netanyahu, Thank you. You’ve reminded me of my capacity to experience immense rage. Candidly, Mark Chmiel Dear Frenchwell, Thank you for passing on the wisdom and skill of your Israeli genius-teacher. You practice right…