I had some sophomores tell me recently that they were concerned that the gains they had made as writers this year might be lost if they...

(Here is my official return to focusing on So Many Fishes, a collection I am trying to finish by December. Thanks for reading!) I can...

The hardest part of writing is writing. I knew that this blog would challenge me, but why was I so out of my mind that I thought I could...

Impossibly, a student has asked me why we have "Summer Reading" for students but not "Summer Writing." <Insert thunderbolt here> "Great...

Writing every day helps to promote a healthy relationship with writing things that you don't have to be married to. Writing every day...

I’ve been teaching Bull Durham off and on for the past 17 years. Usually, as most of us do, I use it as a way of getting my students to...

So, I've never been a trophy guy, one of those people who always wants to win and thinks that if you don't win you have somehow lost or...

(from the napowrimo prompt: And last but not least, now for our final (but still optional) prompt for this year! Taking a leaf from our...

(from the napowrimo prompt: write a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully.) Let’s...

(from the napowrimo prompt: try your hand at a meta-poem of your own.) When he sits to write about the morning air, the poet voice says...

(from the napowrimo prompt: “remix” a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can pick a line you like and use it...

(from the napowrimo prompt: write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a word, or phrase. You can even repeat an image, perhaps...

(from the napowrimo prompt: write a poem that: Is specific to a season Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste,...

(from the SLCC prompt: write a tricube.) Dominion I walk the dirt road by my tree line Bluejay sights high up from black locust Fox...

(from the NaPoWriMo prompt: write a poem about an animal.) Hey, you! Fat cardinal! Is it really happening? Are you that stoplight red...

(from the NaPoWriMo prompt: write a poem that engages with another art form – it might be about a friend of yours who paints or sculpts,...

(from the SLCC prompt: write a poem about a favorite picture book you read when you were younger.) In the long shadow of Midas and...

(from NaPoWriMo prompt: write a poem that “talks.”) Good morning! How did you sleep? Well. I’m going to fill the bird feeders this...

(from the SLCC prompt: write a poem about forgetting something important.) The neighborhoods I grew up in are gone and the towns they...

(from the NaPoWriMo prompt: write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract...