New Book Coming Out

My next book, I'm No Longer Troubled By the Extravagance, will be published by BOA next year!

Prose Poem workshop filled up!

My one day prose poem workshop at UCLA Extension, 2/1/14, is now filled. It's gonna be fun. I'll be teaching an online class for them in the spring. Hope some of you are interested. You can be in Moscow, Russia, or Rhode Island and take the class!

ADVICE

"Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line."

THEODORE ROETHKE

Prose Poem Workshop Coming Up!

I'm teaching my annual one day prose poem workshop on Feb 1st.  Not only will you learn lots about the prose poem but it's entertaining and we'll write some prose poems in class.

Here's the link: https://www.uclaextension.edu/pages/Course.aspx?reg=Z7262&qe=true

I hope to see you there.

Rick

Oh, this was one of the prose poems written in last year's workshop.

The Legerdemain

Door-to-door sales is a tradition in my family. My mother bought me from a door-to-door salesman when I was five weeks old. I’ve sold everything door-to-door – from silverware to poison, drank Hemlock three times as a demonstration. Slowly closing the eyes is an effective sales tool. I was thirty-six when I sold my first tulip, a Red Emperor to a man on his way to a funeral, stopped him in his driveway. He held the tulip and sobbed. Selling tulips is selling desire. Other flower salesmen sell clichés. The tulip is a nightmare rehabilitated, closer to a human heart than a rose. Tulips are the ears of the dead. My work has hardened my knuckles. At the end of the day I sit in my car and watch the sun set in the rearview mirror. The Monte Flame is my favorite tulip, the way its orange and red petals cup every dirty secret you’ve ever told.

Intermediate Poetry Workshop

I'm going to be teaching an Intermediate Poetry Workshop at UCLA Extension beginning July 3rd.

Here's the link:  Intermediate Poetry Workshop

Here's a description of the workshop:  For those with some previous training in poetry, this workshop focuses on creating work which emphasizes lyrical and innovative language, personal insight, and individual voice. In addition, you refine your knowledge of a number of the craft's formal elements, including structure, imagery, metaphor, and pace, in order to stretch the boundaries of your creative experience. The goal is to produce work which is ambitious and resonant.

Shivani Mehta publishes her first book.

Congratulations to Shivani Mehta. Her book "Useful Information for the Soon-to-be-Beheaded" will be in just a few weeks, in time for AWP.  Read the about it here.

One day prose poem workshop this Saturday

This Saturday, Oct 20th, I'm teaching a one day prose poem workshop for UCLA Extension. It's not too late to enroll. It'll be fun. Hope to see you there.

Here's the class description:

Writing that Fine Line: A Prose Poem 1-Day Workshop 
What's the difference between the prose poem and a piece of short fiction? When should the poetic line give way to the poetic sentence? These are just some of the questions that are answered in this workshop on the prose poem. Other topics include imagery, metaphor, repetition, rhyme (yes, there could be rhyme in a prose poem), surrealism, and prose poem as fable. These give you a new understanding of the prose poem and a toolkit to draw upon for continued writing. Throughout the day, you put your new insights into action as you receive writing prompts from which to write your own prose poems in class. Practitioners of the art are discussed: Charles Baudelaire, Charles Simic, Nin Andrews, Pierre Reverdy, Peter Johnson, and Russell Edson, to name a few. You also receive a bibliography of prose poem books to guide your continued engagement in the form.