Word of the Week: fiesty (ˈfī-stē) Definition (adjective) chiefly Southern US and Midland US 1. a) full of nervous energy : fidgety b) touchy, quarrelsome c) exuberantly frisky 2. having or showing a lively aggressiveness : spunky In Context "She's feisty. She's bawdy. She's bodacious.... She's a bit of a wild child." Vicki Lawrence, quoted in The New York Magazine, 5 Oct. 2018
Writing at Its Best: COVID-19 Edition, by Aaron Su In the midst of our ongoing global pandemic, many of us are finding ourselves attending to friends or relatives in need; balancing new schedules and priorities; or perhaps just idling away at home, as we follow "social distancing" techniques to the best of our abilities. It may feel like our entire lives are being conditioned by this event. For this reason, it is especially important that we find ways to uplift ourselves by writing and speaking in ways that carry the full weight of what we want to say. Stories have a [...]
Instructions on Not Giving Up Ada Limón - 1976- More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the [...]
April is National Poetry Month Poetry can help us celebrate happy times and get us through difficult ones. Lucky for us, this is National Poetry Month! Poets and poetry organizations around the country (and around the world) are offering many ways to lift our spirits and provide calm and comfort through poetry. Poet Tara Skurtu has started #InternationalPoetryCircle on Twitter as a platform for sharing videos of poets reading their favorite poems. Actor Sir Patrick Stewart uses the platform to share his reading of #ASonnetADay . The Academy of American Poets has several suggestions of how to engage with poetry virtually. [...]
Prompt for the Week 4/6/20 “I have to remind myself that the possibility of everything ending up okay is no more outlandish than any worst-case scenario I can conjure,” writes Lilly Dancyger in her essay “My Book Comes Out Next Year. Do I Even Still Believe in Next Year?” at Electric Literature. “If I can imagine a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I tell myself, I should also be able to imagine something like stability.” While acknowledging the precariousness of making plans during this uncertain time, write a personal essay about your hopes for next year. What comes to mind when you allow for [...]
