30 April 2018: This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks and exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else. Now, ain’t that the truth, Annie, and, at the same time, hard to swallow? Of course, my inner world of Bob Dylan … Continue reading Sun and Swirl and Siamese Cats: Moving Through Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life
23 April 2018: And if the oleander spins / you still another way—take a turn and follow it. —Aimee Nezhukumatathil Today at last feels like a spring morning in Montana—forty-five degrees, all sun and blue and light, full of robins. It makes me think of another place and time, makes … Continue reading Spring Is Here (and so Is Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s New Book)
16 April 2018: Almost a year ago, when Jess and I moved apartments, I found a couple bookcases someone was giving away online. I spent a whole afternoon filling them. I placed Leopold next to Muir, Jung next to Aesop, Hemingway next to Dickens. I enjoyed the order, the organizing. One shelf for Kerouac, one … Continue reading My Library
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
Writing from Here 