“Writing a poem is an attention-getting act, so it might be worth asking whose attention are you getting and why?”  says Billy Collins in an interview in The Paris Review, Fall 2001.  Billy Collins, a rock star among American poets, knows something about attention. I’ve gotten almost more attention than I can stand this past  Read the Rest…

The full moon is waning and I am following it down the backside of my Christmas schedule.  Three performances were crushed into this past weekend and my book launch was scheduled for Monday, or in other words, on the day I would typically expect to crash.  Just as I was about to cry “uncle,” on  Read the Rest…

Yesterday morning the church choir sang an old-fashioned romantic piece of music that I first learned as a beginning voice student.  It’s called “Thanks Be to God” by Stanley Dickson and it has the word “bedight” in it.  That’s enough to mark it as a piece for Aunt Maud to sing for The Special Music  Read the Rest…

I was hoping I could come up with something more interesting, certainly more laudatory, than today’s topic but since I haven’t: I yelled at the sopranos the other night.  I was appalled.  I am not in the habit of yelling at my singers.  But after having succumbed to the impulse, what came out of me  Read the Rest…

Awaiting imminent publication of my book, 99 Girdles on the Wall, a memoir about holding in, letting go, and coming to grips.  Meanwhile, life goes on.  Here’s the latest: My church choir has started up after the summer hiatus. For some unaccountable reason, it has swelled to twice what it had been.  New people usually  Read the Rest…

I’ve got my sugar ration down to just fruit.  I had to do something.  All my summer play clothes are loose and diaphanous.  With the recent chill in the air I tried to pull on some real clothes and the biggest thing in my closet was tight.  Not for the first time.  For some of  Read the Rest…

How are we all doing?  When it gets like this, I can’t decide if I feel like watching Dr. Zhivago or Body Heat. In any case, I’ve had a quiet 20 hours without phone, TV or internet connection.  Since I got rid of TV cable a month ago–by choice—I rather expected to still be without  Read the Rest…