As many of you know because I talk about it all the time on social media, there are certain phrases and usages that drive me around the bend and other ones I completely adore. My preferences aren’t predictable, even for me. Sometimes I’ll forget all about them until an innocent stranger uses one and sets […]
At some point every January for the last ten years, I’ve taken an inventory of my books — the books I’ve written — for tax purposes. This is a little random, as I have boxes of my first poetry book in my shed from when the publisher closed its imprint, and I never count those. […]
I didn’t know that fruit grows in cycles until I moved to this house 19 years ago and started a long-term relationship with fruit trees. Some years are stone fruit years (plums, in my case, but elsewhere peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries) and some are not. Here, it’s an every-other-year pattern, and this year is an […]
As many people know, I’m of the “café society” ilk of writers: I work quite well when seated in a bustling coffee house. I say that this comes from being the eldest of four kids, where family action took place in a big kitchen and I learned to do my homework surrounded by lots of […]
Last year, right around this time, county road crews were finishing up some extensive and dramatic widening of the street in front of my house. I’ve written elsewhere about different ways that I made my peace with the project and managed to stay as emotionally steady as possible during the construction. I stopped saying much […]
If you’re a poet, you already know how to write a poem. There are about two thousand methods, and you’ve been using at least five of them. There’s the wake-up-at-3-a.m. method, when either a poem pulls you right out of bed or some bodily function wakes you and then the poem attacks. There’s the pull-over-into-the-next-gas […]
Two interesting things about living in a smaller town intersected in my mind this week. One is how much I form relationships with buildings. People do this in cities, too, but because there are so many options in cities, it can be overwhelming. In smaller places, your choices are more manageable. There are five buildings […]
Spring. I never remember what it’s like until it comes around again, and then I’m bowled over, each year as if it were all new. The scents! The colors! The bravery as daffodils get snowed on again! The first robin! The first quail (today, in the driveway, little chatterbox). Last summer my front yard was […]
I’d like to remind you that the very best time to sneak into your friends’ houses and take photographs is when they are out of town. It’s also helpful when their house-sitter is a friend and will both let you in and tidy up a bit, so laptops, nightgowns, and stray wine glasses from the […]
As many of you know, we’ve been wrestling with drought in California for the past several years — I think officially the number is five years. Here in the foothills, our usual natural disaster is wildfire, and drought makes fires more likely, more dangerous, and harder to fight because water reserves are low. This means […]