For a week, we had too many snowflakes and not enough sunsets. This blizzard was called Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, and Snoverkill. Eventually, it was called SnOMG.

What’s the lesson from four feet of snow? The lesson might be you’ll never have 100% balance. You’ll always have one less sunset than you’d like to have. The lesson might be enjoy what you have. Perhaps the lesson is go with what is.

I don’t know. I’m a poet and not a Zen Buddhist priest although I may play a Zen Buddhist priest on TV.

Since the back of my house faces west and we’re on a hill and nothing blocks the view, we see stunning sunsets. When the dust particles went crazy in Russia, we had stunning sunsets. When nothing happened at all, we had stunning sunsets. I don’t have to do a think to make the sunset happen. I get to be.

I am so fortunate — when not watching a tree crashing towards the kitchen window — to see a sunset that reminds me of one good reason to breathe.

Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Verse

My writing informs my teaching. What I figure out, struggle with, and am inspired by, I bring to my students. And certainly my teaching informs my writing. My students help me rethink what I think I know and remind me to start at the beginning and entertain possibility—a kind of idealism I lose if I listen to the news too much. Teaching and writing and publishing are challenging in different ways. I’m at my best when one informs the other.

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

This is an interesting question for me because I was a spoken word poet for a time. As a teenager, I used to slam at the Nuyorican on 3rd and Avenue B [in New York City]. Spoken and written poetry are both powerful. Spoken word makes wonderful use of rhythm and sound and is often political in nature. Of course, it can be contrived and predictable, but so can poetry on the page. I think spoken word can teach poetry on the page that it is alive—a wriggling live thing that is full of music. Poetry on the page can teach spoken word that you need more than good music and emotional content to drive a poem.

To respond to the second part of your question, I teach Black Women Writers and the Harlem Renaissance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and am always inspired by the premise of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement that art can affect change. Certainly, the Black Arts Movement was more about poetry for the people, poetry in the streets, in the schools, the kitchen, the bar, whereas the Harlem Renaissance was critiqued for its Talented Tenth values as elitist. Nevertheless, both movements shared the belief that art can affect change. And I know it does. I see it in my students. I hear them tell me how poetry changes the way they perceive language, speak, write, and see the world.

3. Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

Chocolate, standard poodles, and James Brown. And going to museums. I painted for many years and studied art as an undergraduate and in graduate school. I enjoy going to museums and taking in other forms of communication. Ditto for aquariums.

4. Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott)

Books of poetry and art have been my best teachers, along with studying music. Jazz was my first teacher, I believe. Though I had written poetry since I was a child, it was when I was a teenager and started listening to jazz that I really started to study language, to think about its rhythms and sounds, and to wonder what I could do with language, how far I could push it.

I didn’t have an active writing community until I went to graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Now that I live in Kansas City, I meet informally with a few poets and we discuss each other’s work. I also email poems to friends for feedback, if needed.

As for books on craft, I like Tony Hoagland’s Real Sofistikashun, which I use in my poetry workshops. Hoagland is smart, has a sense of humor, and doesn’t take himself too seriously.

5. Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Obligation is a heavy word. I’m not sure that poetry has an obligation to anything other than to the poem itself. I write, publish, teach, and give readings. I suppose that’s my way of making poetry accessible or at least available to people. Of course, popular culture doesn’t tend to value things that take time, make you think too much, and don’t involve making money. That just means poetry has a lot of work to do to wake people out of their many modes of passivity. But writers can’t do this work alone.

6. When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

Generally, I don’t listen to music when I read or write. It’s too distracting. However, PJ Harvey, Beck, and the soundtrack to The Royal Tennenbaums have all figured into my manuscripts. The rise and fall and various intensities of PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire helped me come up with the final configuration of my first book, A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight.

7. In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

Much of my work as a writer is solitary, but I’ve always had many groups of friends. I think my insistence on friendship is both a counter to the solitary writer’s life and serves as family replacement, especially now that I live in the Midwest (most of my family is in NJ and Israel). I definitely have more writer friends than I’ve ever had, but I think it’s important to have a variety of friends, both writers and non-writers. My husband is a furniture maker and visual artist, and he is able to help me stay grounded and rediscover perspective when I lose it.

8. How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

I work out at a gym several times a week. And I’m vegetarian. I also try to get outside and play with my dog. My dog and the gym help me keep cool. Talking to my husband and friends helps too.

9. Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

Chocolate. And Jersey pizza, bagels, and cannolis, which I miss now that I live in the Midwest.

As far as keeping myself pumped up, when I’m not writing, I revise. When I’m not revising, I send out. Or I read, or go to a museum, or get art books from the library. I’m not sure chocolate helps me do any of these things, but I like it. A lot.

10. Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

I converted a bedroom in my house into an office and work on a gorgeous, huge dining table my husband made (we don’t currently have a dining room and no room for it elsewhere—lucky me!). My writing space is filled with books. I like having books around me when I write so I can move from reading to writing and back again. I fantasize about having a cork wall so that I can hang up poems on which I’m working and see them all at once. I’m a multitasker at heart and tend to work on a few poems at a time.

11. What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

I’m currently working on a new manuscript, tentatively titled Radio Nurse. This manuscript was inspired by my many years as a medical editor. (The poem that was published in 32 Poems, “Ode to Lymph Nodes,” is part of this manuscript). I’m also trying to find a good home for my second book Architecture at the Mouth. I have an anthology project I’ve been thinking about, too, and a story I’m revising. I guess you could say I’ve been keeping myself busy.

Then, I happen along one of my new favorite blogs, and the author — Karen Maezan Miller — has written let’s see how it goes about the subject of taking a trip to one of her workshops.

Hmmm…I love coincidences. I love saying, “I’ll see how it goes.”

Try saying it today, if you wish, about something and see what it feels like.

I’ve got other ideas and am certain you will like them. Once we get this “word” usage out of the way, we’ll start taxing the use of commas. You will never use “which” or a list of items in your writing again.

Tonight, O and DH raced up and down the sidewalk and I stood and admired the tinge of pink in the clouds and how the cumulus clouds fronted the cirrus clouds in such a way so as to look like brush strokes.

I am also grateful to have written five poem drafts and five revisions. I’ve got more ideas to work on, too. I only have to carve the time out of my schedule to do the work.

What are you grateful for these days?

I know, I know. This isn’t a shopping blog. But, books! But, purses! Put them together and I can barely contain myself.

If you like them, you can order from their site.

These pistolstitched folks were my favorites of all the artists.

If you can get over the shock of 8 organic apple slices (one half of an apple) costing $2, then there’s nothing to fear but fear itself at this hip festival. I’d definitely go back.

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O and I got stares because I loaded her in the mei tai carrier and she rode on my back. I guess people are used to seeing strollers. A 30ish man offered to help me get O into the carrier, which creeped me out. He sensed my creepy feeling because he quickly explained he has kids (so I am not supposed to think he’d kill me) and that he could never get them into back carriers without help. I smiled and was slightly less creeped out, but I still declined the offer.

At the festival, O made a friend and she and the friend were running around like wild ones. Then, I noticed a poet and we got to talking. His child was the one O had targeted as her friend of the minute.

On the way back to the car, I ran into random people I met at an Oktoberfest party 40 miles away the day before. I love how ‘small town’ DC feels at times.

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On another note, I still can’t believe my grandmother is dead. Grieving sucks.

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I’ve written five poems during September. I’m only counting the ones that I’ll keep.

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Today I learned to make compost tea and am the proud mama to several (how many!?) red wriggler worms. Eek. I am concerned about killing them by accident. Evidently, they like to eat paper and coffee grounds. Feeding them sounds easy enough. Paper should not be too hard to add to their bucket, right? As a writer, I should have plenty of paper around.

The worms are hanging out in my living room. My husband is VERY understanding.

While looking for a flask at a cigar shop one day, I accidentally ended up at an educational store where I found pencils and stickers to include in the favors. When I came home and excitedly told DH all about it, he may have wondered what was wrong with me and why I was so excited about party favors when, really, could I not have just bought him a flask like he wanted? He just could not see the big picture. I mean, for what other reason would he not share my excitement about favors?

The time came to put the pieces all together. Of course, I left this until the night before the party, because I’m a busy working mother who had made three casseroles, cooked 48 cupcakes, chopped a pineapple, carved a watermelon into a whale and cleaned my entire house (except for the part DH cleaned). I asked DH to help, and we ended up wrapping each roll with tissue paper — I confess to buying the tissue paper new — and then tying off the ends like little sausages with ribbon recycled from a birthday present. Voila! I lined them all up and was pleased.

O’s friend G. opened his party favor, looked at all the goodies inside, and exclaimed, “Oh, it even has a toilet paper roll!”

See, I deliver.

From Reb Livingston’s blog:

I remember that I don’t want to become the bitter 50 year old woman in the back row listening to my male peer talk about how you “just have to work” if you want to accomplish something, him seemingly forgetting how someone else took care of his children and home and basically his entire fucking life so he could “just work.” I don’t want to be that angry woman in the back row yelling at the moderately famous novelist that he never cleaned his house. Seriously, I recently witnessed that.

I don’t want to be that bitter lady either, and I met her at a writing residency. The one I met was railing on a painter. That’s why I work myself so hard. People say they can’t believe how much I do. I know I’ve written about this before here. Man, I don’t have but so much time to get done what I want to do. It also helps I have a husband who actually does a lot of the child rearing.