Just an uncommon lull in the traffic so you hear some guy in an apron, sleeves rolled up, with his brusque sweep brusque sweep of the sidewalk, and the slap-shut of a too-thin rental van, and the I told him no a gust has snatched from a conversation and brought to you, loud. It would […]
Wind and a weakness, dandelion letting go through a rift in summer. Someone imagines loving the cold. Out of the clouds the slant wish, one color— dust on the pond, your breath closing a mirror.
James Richardson talks about determining what form a poem will take: I feel like I’m at least a semi-formalist poet—my line is often within hearing distance of iambic, I like the shapings of (usually half-) rhyme, I’m attracted to quatrains (though I also write prose aphorisms and several kinds of free verse). But I’d never, […]
James Richardson on what he finds to be the most difficult obstacle to being a poet: I’m fortunate enough (one has to say in these times) to be over-employed, so time and peace have often eluded me. How do we sit down and engage in the vast waste of time, the slaughter of hours and […]
James Richardson on what he finds to be the most pleasurable aspect of writing: Sometimes the things I’m writing out of (grief, shame) are unpleasant, but it seems to me that writing itself is almost always a pleasure. Or rather that when it isn’t, when I’m bored, I quit. That’s necessary—seems to me any hint […]
James Richardson on his writing time, on having a writing ritual: I call it “drifting and gazing” and 90% of the time it happens in my study, sitting by a window with a cup of coffee and a book, in the morning. Trains and airports also work.
James Richardson on reading his work aloud when he writes: The sound, and more specifically the voice or speakability, of a poem is incredibly important to me. My interest in rhythm, pacing, tone, syntax, sound patterning is borderline crazed (e.g., I teach prosody and have scanned a bazillion poems, toted up 3rd vs. 4th -beat […]