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Ephemeral

As a written form, poetry has a unique style and structure when compared to other types of writing. Poetry often includes deliberate line breaks, sound patterns, word counts per line, and rhythm, which makes it different from prose and contributes to how readers recognize it.

You Never Know

You say you never know to mean that it is not certain what will happen in the future, and to suggest that there is some hope that things will turn out well. You never know, I might get lucky. There might be an even bigger one — I doubt it, but you never know.

Marriage

Some readers see poetry as inherently difficult to understand, and this can set you up for having a hard time enjoying readingit. "Much of what's good in contemporary poetry right now is fairly accessible... Ocean Vuong, Tina Chang, Victoria Chang, Analicia Sotelo, Jenny George, Morgan Parker, Tracy K. Smith, and Kate Baer, to name a few." Poetry is also more accessible than ever in the sense you can find a lot of it for free (including here.) "The beauty of the internet is that you can read full poems online..."

Coward

Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. Curiosity is a useful attitude, especially when it's free of preconceived ideas about what poetry is or should be. Effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem.

I Shouldn't Say This

Many people consider poetry to actually predate literacy. (Although how peop;e could read peotry back then, I'll never know) The oldest written works were all appeared in some poetic form. The style is believed to have aided memorization for oral transmission. In thsoe days, storytellers had lousy memories.

Help

Writing poetry can be therapeutic, because whether we're writing or reading poems, they help us engage our senses and our feelings. This provides a good merging of poetry and psychology. And isn't psychology all about helping?

Just Released:  Detour to Danger, Connie Murphy Mysteries E-Book #8

Connie Murphy is a senior drug investigator with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She is dedicated to protecting public health and safety, but while conducting seemingly routine inspections, intrigue and danger intervene. As you proceed through the series, Connie grows as an investigator, and you get to know her personality, interests, family, love life, and more. The Connie Murphy Mysteries are based on my experience as an FDA investigator. Detour to Danger is the eighth e-book in the series.

Random Coworker

An ER nurse and her coworkers decided gummy bears needed to be renamed based on color. They decided the yellow one was suffering from liver failure. The green one was vomiting. The blue one had hypothermia. The pink one was mildly anemic, the white one had bled out, and the black one was dead.

Pandemic in Florida

As of December 2021, among all US states Florida had the eighth-highest per capita case rate. As of July 2021, one in every five new COVID-19 cases recorded in the United States came from Florida.

Cancer Scare

For Cancer, the fourth sign in the zodiac, the motto is "I feel, therefore I am." But sometimes that motto can be a scary, not a comforting, thing. Interestingly, "Cancer" is an ancient word of Indo-European origin, derived from a root meaning "to scratch."

White Water

White water kayaking is an adventure sport where a rapid body of water is navigated in a kayak. Whitewater kayaking includes several styles. The Greek, Herodotus, 484-425 BC, wrote in his travel diaries about boats with which merchandise was brought from Armenia to Babylon. The boats were made of a wooden framework that was covered with animal skins. There was no mention as to his use of one of these boats.

The Screaming Summer of 2003

Poetry may be a better stress reliever than working out or meditating because it requires you to articulate your thoughts through words, which helps you not only understand your emotions but also communicate them more effectively. From a writer's perspective, writing poetry can be equally elusive as reading poetry. Many writers believe poetry can be a mask they can hide behind. But no matter how beautiful you made it, it ends up being a window to your soul.

Quiet Time is Necessary

Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other. --Henri Nouwen

First World Problems

The stage is set for war. Oil prices are surging to record highs. China is threatening Taiwan. Russian forces appear ready to strike south. The battle in American politics is heating up into the most fiercely contested presidential election in American history… wait a minute, that's not fiction…

Excerpt from CHEAT TO WIN

Connie Murphy is a senior drug investigator with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She is dedicated to protecting public health and safety, but while conducting seemingly routine inspections, intrigue and danger intervene. As you proceed through the series, Connie grows as an investigator, and you get to know her personality, interests, family, love life, and more.

To Nicole

Most readers start a new poem assuming that they can understand what they read on the first pass, and if they don't, that something is wrong with them or with the poem. Still, others will assume that the poem is a kind of secret code, that each word or line corresponds to one meaning, and unless they can crack this code like an Enigma machine, they've missed the point. Then there is always that segment of readers for whom the poem can mean anything they want it to mean.

The reading of any poem revolves around the question of meaning, an inquiry that frequently has multiple answers. Since a poem is part meaning, part technique, and also about things like rhyme or wordplay. This results in several directions for interpretation.

Cloudy Skies

In a park in Moscow, there is a monument to the Soviet Union building a nuclear bomb. It's in the actual shape of the bomb. Now, admittedly, in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, we have an obelisk erected to the event of July 16, 1945. But that's a little different, and less scary, than placing a nuclear bomb facsimile in the middle of your capital city.