When Merric learned that I am into fairy tales, she asked which ones—and when I told her (the girl going into the woods ones) she said, “Grimms!” Then she told me she wandered after high school to the part of Germany where the Brothers Grimm grew up. The Stranger: Merric The Word: Wander The poem I wrote:…
Articles from November 2018
The word: Home
A glitch on my website that was bouncing back emails has been fixed. Now, if you respond to this email, I should receive it. Thank you always for reading, writing poems, and responding. Onto the 277th poem: Evan, age 10, and Rachel, his mother, moved from Illinois in August. They came to the library and when I…
The word: Wolf
“I appreciate what you do,” Hoda said to me while I was writing, then she started to walk away. “Wait!” I said. “Please tell me what sorts of things you do.” Hoda teaches university-level computer science, a fact that led us to a conversation about robotics and girls in STEM. (I googled her later—she is…
The word: Thought
I recognized a father and son who were visiting the library, and we figured out that we had seen each other before at my children’s school. The son, Evan, gave me the word “thought” for a poem, and it was fun to imagine all of the ways the word could be spun. The Stranger: Evan The…