9 April 2018: All I know about the Cascades was learned on one unnerving drive in the May of 2013, crossing the mountain range at Snoqualmie Pass as the morning turned white. Fat snowflakes crashed on and off my windshield. Unlucky cars flashed their lights, resting in ditches. I heard the radio’s warnings, saw the … Continue reading Crossing the Cascade Range May Be a Little Like Writing a Poem →

2 April 2018: He would become a writer concerned above all with the poetry of what he remembered and perceived. —Joyce Johnson Last year I read a Kerouac bio by Joyce Johnson called The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac. I remember not wanting the book to end. Not wanting to be … Continue reading Kerouac: A Thought or Two →

26 March 2018: I spend my days unraveling the knot of the places I’ve been, stories I’ve read, and people I’ve met. Or, maybe, I spend my days making that knot. Either way, the knot. I can look out my window this afternoon in Bozeman and imagine what Ed Abbey saw from his fire lookout … Continue reading The Knot →

19 March 2018: About poems that don’t work— who wants to see a bird almost fly? —Mary Oliver Now that we are saving daylight again, my mornings are in the dark mostly. Now that time has changed, my alarm rings through the pitch of night still hanging above the parking lot next door. Out there … Continue reading Melting Snow and Mary Oliver →

12 March 2018: Like brightness buried by one’s sullen mood —William Jay Smith, “Quail in Autumn” Photography could be called the perfect art form because, well, it is what it is. But—as with any art form—who’s to know what I’ll bring to the table as seer, observer: the man come from afar with a wagon-load … Continue reading Easing into the Scene: A Small Thought on Photography or any Art Really →

5 March 2018: Poet-in-residence at the airport. That’s what I’ve called myself for the past six months, sitting out here with each day’s inbound and outbound flights, working at the Yellowstone store, doing what I can for the park, writing poems in my downtime. But it’s all coming to an end today. My last day. … Continue reading Poet-in-Residence: Bozeman-Yellowstone International Airport →

26 February 2018: A few days ago I helped set up a used book sale at the library here in downtown Bozeman. Another odd job, another “resumé builder.” (Add it to the list.) Beginning at 8:00 a.m., a group of six of us hauled 360 boxes up from the basement—the boxes neatly labeled “Softcover Fiction,” … Continue reading The Used Book Sale →

19 February 2018: I once worked as a writing tutor for Miami-Dade College. There I met the poet Ricardo Pau-Llosa. A Cuban-American poet with a laundry list of publications, several books, and a PhD in English from the University of Florida, Pau-Llosa's first book, Sorting Metaphors, was the winner of the 1983 Anhinga Press Prize … Continue reading I Used to Know the Poet Ricardo Pau-Llosa and This Is What He Told Me →

12 February 2018: To Whom It May Concern My name is Travis Truax, and I am submitting my application for an editorial internship with [  ]. I received my bachelor’s degree in English from Southeastern Oklahoma State in 2010. Since then I have done my best to stay nomadic and explore what truly tickles my … Continue reading An Old Cover Letter (from 2014) →

5 February 2018: Time has come for the close of another notebook. This big green one I've slowly filled since September, slowly filled with five months of complaints and hope, with place and poetry, with money trouble and odd jobs, with new words (effulgent, frowzy, festinate), with work on my book, with work on this blog, … Continue reading The Close of Another Notebook →