Boston.com did a nice story about my MBTA haiku coping mechanism. I’m not alone in my beef with the T.
Haiku in the news!
poetry
More Haiku For You!
Even if you’re not in the area, you may have heard about the winter Massachusetts has been having. We’ve been getting pounded relentlessly, and it’s caused the Boston-area transit system to be completely shut down several times. Even when it’s not shut down, it works less than great. In an effort to stay sane in the face of being constantly stuck on trains, I’ve begun to write haikus and tweet them at the MBTA. I’ve been collecting them at T’d Off Haikus, or if you want to watch them unfold in real time, you can follow me on Twitter (@erikpkraft). They predict it will be 30 days from the end of snow to get the system back up and running, and snow is forecast for tonight, so I’ve got at least another month to go with this.
If you’re interested in a copy of my 2011 Haiku-A-Day book, you can get one here or here.
My Haiku-A-Day collection is ready!
Back in 2011, I wrote a haiku every day and put them on my Tumblr. I have been meaning to collect these and publish them for a while, but things got busy. I had been meaning to get this out during April, since that’s poetry month, but I got sick and ran into technical difficulties. But none of that matters, because here we are.
You can buy it here.
The magic of tracking your rejections
On the one hand, you keep all the negativity in one place. On the other, seeing a whole list of “DENIED!” is kind of a bummer. Maybe I need to work on my phrasing. (See, you can put a positive spin on it! In any case, it seems poetry is a tough sell in general, mine especially so.)
Poetry Month excitement, part 1
I have a poem up at Word Riot today, if you are so inclined.
Happy Poetry Month!
I’m going to have some exciting poetry news to share later in April, but for now, just get into it. Here’s my favorite William Carlos Williams poem to help you get started.
As the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot
Ounce Dice Trice!
Here’s a post over on Brain Pickings about my favorite kid’s book of all time, Ounce Dice Trice. I absolutely love everything about this book. It’s essentially nothing but word play inside with illustrations by Ben Shahn. If you just like the sounds of certain words, or thinking about silly names for things, this is your book. I have often wondered if this would get published today, since marketing something like this would pose a problem for many publishers. There’s nothing else like this, as far as I know. If there is, I want to see it!
