Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.

A midst deceit I found the truth;there in the rough I found a diamond.And from the moment we met,I think of no one elseToday I choose to be, to live and breathe;to dream, to weep,...

When you left you left behind a fieldof silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds…you left a million butterfliesmid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you...

The ocean-blue bowl won’t refuse to bruise, won’t hold it back from the gaping earth-wounds.There will still come water, chill wind and happy goosebumps, and in the utmost corners of oaks, leaves laughing.

Friend who has fired the kingfishers and flamed the dragonflies – they catch your light however they move and beam it out of their eyes.

It is something to have gazed on the constellated white, felt it running from the eyes and the pores: the salt of love. It is something to have whispered wild thank-yous in the only ways...

You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort....

If You KnewWhat if you knew you’d be the lastto touch someone?If you were taking tickets, for example,at the theater, tearing them,giving back the ragged stubs,you might take care to touch that palmbrush your fingertipsalong...

Dead ButterflyBy Ellen BassFor months my daughter carried a dead monarch in a quart mason jar. To and from school in her backpack, to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table it sat like...

Have you everhad so much to saythat your mouth closed up tightstruggling to harnessthe nuclear forcecoalescing within your words?Have you everhad so many thoughtschurning inside you that you didn’tdare let them escapein case they blew...

Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions,...