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Photograph of the view from the top of Nob Hill

Nob Hill

We’re in a crosswalk on the steep crest of Nob Hill, it’s late, and a woman passes by.  This woman is or is not attractive.  This woman is or is not an acquaintance.  This woman is alone.  In the crook of her arm she holds a gilled leather handbag with a gold shell clasp.  At…

Photo of an abstract painting

“No Orangutan”

I began my public blogging career (brief though it may be) last week with “Start with A”, suggesting that teachers of poetry—who are frequently poets—might want to begin at a more basic level than many of us do. That included beginning with the literal level of a poem, because we’ve all seen bewildered students, or…

Arial photo of Los Angeles

Old Poems

Old poems in U-Store-Its. Old poems in leather-tied journals, on loose-leaf foolscap ripply with weathermarks. Old poems on public websites. Old poems in stacks by the printer, in hidden folders on crashed hard drives. I go back to my old poems with a dry suspicion, a parental eye, poems that have lingered five, ten years…

Close-up image of rain hitting the street

Rain

Peter Kline, our second guest blogger, will post on Wednesdays through August.  Peter’s poems “Universal Movers” and “Revisionary” appear in our Spring 2011 issue edited by Colm Toibin. “For the rain it raineth every day.” -Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Weeks of rain here in San Francisco.  Pissing spritzes and forty-eight-hour hosings.  Orgiastic immersions.  Delicate, misty sheaves…

Image of a girl reading a book which covers her face.

What I Reread and Why

This week we welcome three new Get Behind the Plough bloggers to Ploughshares. The first is Angela Pneuman, whose fiction story “Occupational Hazard” appears in our Spring 2011 issue edited by Colm Toibin.  Angela will post on Mondays through August. When I started writing, one thing I never considered was how many other writers I…