Poetry Rules

I am so pleased that my new chapbook, Diagnosis , is now available from  {dancing girl press & studio} . I am indeed happy and grateful that Kristy Bowen chose it in the first place. I know a few of my friends have already ordered a copy and I hope more will. Let me tell you something about how the poems of this chapbook came to me. The original poem, which is also the one that gives the name to the chapbook, revolves around the idea that being "diagnosed" with poetry can be a lacerating experience. Writing about the hare in this poem made the whole difference. Indeed, when picking up my collection of poems by Sylvia Plath just a few days later and leafing through its pages, I ended up reading her poem "Totem." It was then that I found the path I was looking for. The following lines struck a chord deep within me: "In the bowl the hare is aborted, Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice, Flayed of fur and humanity, Let us eat it like Pl...

Turning the pages of Hélène Cardona’s Dreaming my Animal Selves (Salmon Poetry, 2013), I found myself following salmons, trailing behind swans and watching elves sailing down the river on leaves. This bilingual collection is imbued with such an unparalleled grace that one cannot help feeling captured by Nature’s most holy places and creatures, as in Charles Baudelaire’s “ Correspondances .” Surrounded by deer, hares and herons one indeed feels part of the Creation itself. The poet is herself part of it. No wonder leaves are so often referred to, no wonder vine surrounds the umbilical, no wonder the author rips the same vine in order to liberate the letters of her name until “they soar above the ocean/for the falcon to reclaim.” (from “Dancing the Dream.") In “The Isle of Immortals” we learn that “the ultimate aim is reverence of the universe.” Despite the often referred to dreamlike atmosphere, this collection is deeply rooted in the need of declaring that the poetic word ...

I had a fixed set of goals for 2015, but what happened to our dog in the past few days just made me realize that I cannot live according to preset rules. I won't worry about achieving this year. I will focus on feeling and on being. I plan to seize my day every day.