When I was a small child my family owned a bizarre box that served as a brightly-lit portal to dark and remote places where dwelt monsters as well as the most startling and stark-raving-mad episodes of fear which often blossomed into sheer horror, filled with zombies and demons, not to mention spooky high angelic voices and the unhinged muttering of absolute blithering madness. We called it a “television.” Our pretense was that we controlled it, right? I mean, in some ways ye

Writing is such a wonderful thing, and I applaud you doing any sort of writing—as long as you reflect upon it a bit afterwards. Revision and editing are fantastic tools that are always at your disposal, to not only make sure that you work is absolutely free of error, but also so you can get just the right nuance and subtle intentionality into your work in just the shades you would wish. How will you know a piece needs more work? You’ll probably think “No, that’s not quite it.

If you go out looking for trouble, you’re going to find it. You know? That’s just how it is, one of those eternal verities, and this sage advice comes to us from at least as far back as the Greeks (insert arcane Classical reference here), and is just as true today as it ever was. Attitude counts, and if yours is surly and fractious you cannot deem yourself ill-used by Fate or discommoded by the Gods if you purposefully provoke fractious surliness from those you encounter. N'e

I object to leaders who don’t read widely and often. You can tell by the shallowness of their speech just how barren their interior landscape is, and how tragically impoverished their mind is shown to be by their utterances and actions. Now I do understand that reading is not for everyone, and there are a few factors that go into this, such as social status, economics and lack of opportunity. Just 25% of Americans attend a four-year college, after all, and plenty of of them w

What finer education could there be than to spend your time in the company of poets? Is there another path of lived experience even half so much worth going through? After all, they are the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” (as Percy Bysshe Shelley would have it), and, as we are reminded, these darn poets are the music makers—why, they are in truth the actual dreamers of dreams, the men and women most likely to have thought through their subject (often at considerable

Any aggressive mashie or niblick talk is discouraged. If scores are changed, erased, written over or obscured, The Club Drone and the Rules Committee shall sequester themselves in the Port Wine Locker, while players will return to the scene of their last lost ball and take three drops, playing the one that rolls farthest downhill. From that position play must be complete by midnight, using flaming brands and torches if must needs be. Any over-topping of the ball or fl

The Count By Samuel A. Southworth One is for eternity, Two is for the trees, Three is for modernity And four is as you please. Five is for propinquity, Six is never square, Seven is ubiquity While eight just doesn’t care. Nine is always dressing, Ten your mother knows— Eleven is a blessing And twelve knows where it goes. February 17th, 2026 in NH

So, my needs for poetry are not complicated. First, I'd like there to be poetry, and I'm willing to do it myself. Then, I want the language to jump and sparkle if it can--tell me something I haven't heard before, phrase it in an unusual way, and use words like "scantling" and "half-holing" and "full-wide." Vivid details are always appreciated. Furthermore, I am ensorcelled by enjambment, which is taking sentences and making them run through poetic verses including from line t

For All We Know is a large book of poetry that will suit all types of readers, from traditionalists to the fringe, written using divine inspiration as well as tight deadlines by a deft wordsmith with a subversive talent for seeing the fantastic in the prosaic, and the tragedy hidden beneath laughter. Provoked into verse by an unusually broad range of reference materials, reflecting a lifetime of reading everything from Homer to Kerouac, and from ancient Babylon to outer space