poetry

don't be afraid of a haiku

By Kate / May 29, 2008 / Comments Off on don't be afraid of a haiku

You can be afraid of mastitis, but don’t be afraid of a little haiku. Post your entry for the mastitis haiku contest here. The contest closes tomorrow (Friday) at 5 p.m. The winner receives a $10 gift card to amazon.com. This is big-time, people. How can you not enter for a chance to win?

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mastitis haiku contest

By Kate / May 23, 2008 /

In deference to the breastfeeding gods, I am hosting the FIRST EVER mastitis haiku contest right here at Mother Words. How to enter: Think hard about mastitis. Write a haiku about it. Type your haiku in the comments field of this post. Note: You need not have experienced mastitis to write a haiku or to…

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8 weeks old

By Kate / May 1, 2008 /

It’s hard to believe that Zoe is already 8 weeks old. I’m not sure exactly how big she is, but it’s somewhere around 11 pounds. She seems huge, wearing clothes that Stella wore when she was five months old! As hard as these infants months are for me, I feel myself grasping, trying to hold…

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Knopf poetry and Sharon Olds

By Kate / April 15, 2008 /

As you all know, it’s National Poetry Month. And I hope you all know that Knopf will e-mail you one poem every day for the whole month! Yesterday, what was sitting in my inbox? The wonderful “Looking At Them Asleep” by Sharon Olds. So perfect for me right now. It ends: oh my Lord how…

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on empathy

By Kate / October 11, 2007 /

I’m wondering what would happen if we could—and would—regularly imagine the lives of people, real people in our country and in our world, who live lives beyond our own experience. What would happen to our public policy, and foreign policy, if we didn’t seemingly lack the ability to imagine lives? It’s impossible, it seems, to…

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poetry and concentration

By Kate / September 19, 2007 /

I haven’t been able to focus on much of anything during the last week. I had a good report from my doctor: baby is okay, take it easy, no exercise, nap every day. The good part, of course, is that the baby is fine. The difficult parts, for me, are taking it easy and not…

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creative cross training

By Kate / June 10, 2007 /

On Friday night, D. and I went to see Figaro at Teatre de la Jeune Lune. We don’t do this sort of thing very often, and that afternoon I almost wished we weren’t going. I had a gazillion things to do, I was exhausted, and we were babysitting Stella’s cousin. Our house was strewn with…

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willow room

By Kate / May 13, 2007 /

This morning I woke slowly, to the sound of birds and wind in the trees. D. and Stella brought me breakfast in bed, one of my favorite things. I held Stella in my lap as we waited for her new clothes to come out of the drier. A bowl of oranges in her hand, she…

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the hearts of birds

By Kate / May 9, 2007 /

On Monday night, I was one of 1300 people at the Mary Oliver reading at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. In the sanctuary, we were seated shoulder to shoulder. Two other rooms (also packed) piped Oliver in via video feed. Seriously, 1300 people paid to see a poet read her work. I kept saying to…

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brooks and my failure with form

By Kate / March 11, 2007 /

I just read Gwendolyn Brooks’ Selected Poems for one of my book clubs. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I’ve read her work. Maybe I read the poem “We Real Cool” in high school, but I’m not even sure. It felt familiar-does that count for something? There were a couple…

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