Thankful Thursday: Not A Robot

Good news! This is a 100 percent, handcrafted, handmade, human-produced poem. I am not a robot!

Notice the skips and starts, the not-sures and maybes? That’s me, all me. It’s Thankful Thursday and I’m grateful to be writing with my own hands and body and mind.

And you? What are you making by hand and by heart? The poem that pulses, the painting that screams? All the agony and awe — that’s what I want.

On this Thankful Thursday, I pause in gratitude for the raw and real, the toil and beauty of a handmade life.

What are you thankful for today?

Thankful Thursday: Outsiders

Rabbitbrush, a literary journal. Photo by Elisa Carlsen.

Because it is October, already.

Because the days pass faster than my mind can track.

Because of . . . everything, today is Thankful Thursday on Friday.

Whatever the day, let’s pause to appreciate the big and small, the puny and profound.

* * *

This week I’m thankful for outsiders and underdogs, fringes and frays, all of us standing on the edges peering in and turning away.

Is this you? If you’re here now, reading this, you’re likely an outsider, too.

* * *

My newest favorite outsider is Rabbitbrush, a literary journal.

First, I was taken by the name: rabbitbrush. My favorite autumn plant! And a colorful shrub featured in Forecast, my artist-poetry collaboration with painter Tracy Weil!

And then I caught this tagline: “catering to outsiders with a connection to the American West.”

Ding, ding, ding! Right away, Rabbitbrush called me.

* * *

What’s an outsider? In the creative world, outsiders are typically self-taught artists who create for personal expression rather than commercial success, who lack traditional training, and who have limited access and inclusion.

Rabbitbrush wants all that — and more:

“We want to publish people writing about their life in rural or isolated areas; experiencing poverty and or who grew up poor; people experiencing housing instability; people living with disabilities of any kind; people with mental health challenges; our elders; communities of color; people in the queer community; people in recovery; people who have experienced extreme spiritual communities; the youth, etc . . .”

* * *

But, wait, there are more reasons to love this new journal.

Instead of including writer bios dripping with achievement, contributors have to dig deeper:

“Your bio is your story, your personal struggle, your triumph, your vulnerability . . . DO NOT send a list of your publications, awards, residencies, workshops or your creative writing education. If your bio contains such information, your submission will not be considered.”

I love this approach.

* * *

For a variety of reasons, I rarely submit work to literary journals. For years I did, had some success, and it felt good to see my work in the world.

But the satisfaction was short-lived, the sense of credibility I thought I needed was fleeting, and the process and system left me desperate and empty.

But this time felt different. Rabbitbrush resonated.

I sent a few poems, and a letter of appreciation.

* * *

The first issue published this month, and I’m delighted to read a journal packed with poetry, fiction, and nonfiction works that showcase a mix of voices and experiences — from truck drivers to teachers, nomads to homesteaders, and more.

* * *

“Hardship is not the price of admission, vulnerability is,” writes Editor Elisa Carlsen, in the debut issue.

“If my journal accomplishes only one thing,” she says, “I hope it will be to encourage people to reflect upon their story, the one that plays out in their head, and to consider how it drives who they are and what they write about.”

Right on, and write on!

For many of us, writing is the vehicle to explore our lives, the world, and how and where we fit — inside or out.

I’m thankful for people and places encouraging the drive.

* * *

It’s Thankful Thursday (on Friday), a weekly-ish pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. Attention attracts gratitude, and gratitude expands joy. Please join me.

What are you thankful for today?

On Sunday: What We See

Tumult, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

I am rowing. I am rowing, though the wind pushes me back.

— Anne Sexton, from Rowing

 

1.
I am paging through a book when I find my past. In a photo snapped years ago, on film, back in the days of one good shot and delayed mortification.

We are squinting, my mother and I, though the sun is behind us and the years of tears are still close. We are squeezing smiles, ready for the bond to break, always a thin thread quick to fray.

This is how you find a photo after memory has made you bitter and worn.

2.
I am tired of the work of reading the weather of you and you and you. All the yous I know and love. And neighbors and strangers, every path I cross an exercise I can’t turn off. Absorb, absorb, absorb.

Without trying or wanting, I take the temperature of a body that slumps, a hitch in a voice, a slow drawl, a rapid ramble. With each sharp tone or a conspiratorial whisper, my shoulders rise, jaw tightens, breathing shallows. How loud is a glance. A sigh is a storm. 

3.
I do not want this power that has so little value. I hate the way I hear everything you do not say.

 “But did you have fun?” a friend asks when I return exhausted from a party.

 “Yes,” I lie. “It was fun.”

4.
How do other people do this?

Float from event to event, person to person? Energized and buoyant? How do you not carry the weight of every person you meet?

After my father died, after the initial tidal wave of grief, I felt a lightness that lasted for weeks, then months. The years of worry slid away and I felt a floating. I thought it might last forever.

5.
Last week, while cleaning my desk, I found the photo taken three decades ago, my mom and me, arms gingerly entwined, our bodies still strong, smiling.

It happened so rarely, physical affection, and seeing the photo I remember that I had forgotten the good things: the hike, the rowboat, the crisp autumn air, how we liked each other, how that day we felt a rare ease.

6.
Maybe there is more and I’m ready to see more moments like this, a life like this: easy and real.

Maybe I can wear the weather, both sun and storm, and know I am more than I feel right now.

* * *

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

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Call for Poems (Yours!)

We want your poems.

How often do you hear this?

Not often enough.

I’m co-curator of the Indian Creek Trail Poetry Walk, and it’s true — we want your poems!

The Poetry Walk project brings together two things I love: poetry in public and nature . . . along with community building, sense of place, and the power of creative expression.

Located in Hood River, Oregon (where I live), the Poetry Walk is a collection of poems dotted along the Indian Creek Trail. The urban walking trail traverses a town in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge that is situated along the convergence of two waterways: the Hood River spilling from Mount Hood, and the Columbia River dividing the states of Oregon and Washington.

The Poetry Walk features approximately 20 poems by local writers and is on display from April to September.

We’re now selecting poems for the 2027 Poetry Walk. Please consider sharing your poems with us.

Submission Guidelines:
• Open to poets who live, or have roots, in the Mid-Columbia River Gorge region

• Poems must be nature-themed and reflective of the culture, history, and character of the region

• Poems may not exceed 20 lines  

• Submit up to three poems

There is no entry fee and previously published poems are acceptable.
Poems are chosen by a panel of judges in a blind jury process.

Submit poems as individual PDFs attached to a brief email to gorgepoetrywalk@gmail.com.

Each submission must include the poet’s name in the email but not on the poem document itself. Deadline for submissions is November 1, 2026.

The Poetry Walk is a collaboration of the Hood River County Library District and the Hood River Valley Parks and Recreation District.

To learn more, go to: hoodriverlibrary.org/poetry-walk

See also:

• What Is A Nature Poem?

• Five Tips for Writing Nature Poems

Thankful Thursday: Mail Call

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.

Hello, it’s Thankful Thursday.

Thank you for showing up, and keeping me accountable, appreciative, and grateful for things big and small. Attention attracts gratitude, and gratitude expands joy, and my gratitude grows when shared with you.

Some days are more difficult than others, to find the good, to comb through the junk. Here’s what I've found to appreciate this week.

 * * *

Remember the Love Languages? I never read the 1990s bestseller but knew right away which was mine: written words.

Write me a letter and you have a friend for life.

This week I’m thankful for a full mailbox, a full heart.

1.
Still Here

Every week for six years, a friend sends me an email.

Sometimes ten lines, sometimes two. Sometimes funny, often punny, and always kind.

What began as a thoughtful check-in during the pandemic, has endured and lifted, and made me strong.

It’s a weekly hello that says more than the message. In every word I hear: I’m still here. And you are, too.

2.
Write On

Praise the bounty of words that arrive at my door! What a treasure to hold a book from a face you know, a voice you can hear, a heart you hold:

• This Is How I by Riley Danvers

• Junkie Boy: A MotherWork by Linnea Wortham Harper

• 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts by Tarn Wilson

3.
Time Limit

From a new friend, a letter arrives. The envelope is damp, the penmanship sloppy.

Nothing is happening, she writes, but how little time we have to know each other.

In the unfurling, there is a refreshing directness, a welcome urgency. Line by line of nothing much, and yet with tenderness every small thing is made whole.

4.
Art Tee
A package arrives — wearable art. The newest delightful design from artist-farmer Tracy Weil.

Get yours here.

5.
Letter Poems

I love poems praising mail. It’s a niche, I know, and I’m always on the hunt for poems to add to my collection.

Some of my favorites are This is a Letter by Rebecca Dunham, Postcard by Olena Kalytiak Davis, Salutations by Luisa A. Igloria, Elegy for the Personal Letter by Allison Joseph, and this one:

Letter

Today I did almost nothing.
Read a little, tried to write a sentence
to make another sentence seem necessary.

I wasn't unhappy. Everything
I could will myself to do I'd done,
so I said I'd done enough.

Now I'm looking out my window:
white pine, ash, a single birch,
the leanings and crossings

of branches. And then the sky:
pale, undecided. Years ago
you wrote to me about a matter

that worried you, and you said
at the end, "That's probably the best,
and most true, way to think about it."

I kept your sentence in my notebook.
I liked its shape. I admired the way,
young as you were, you could feel

one kind of thinking
adjusting into another, one truth
becoming a better truth.

Now you're far off, and alone, and I
have no advice you haven't already
given yourself. What can I tell you?

That I'm here? That today, when I saw
how tenderly the light was moving
among those trees, I thought of you?

— Lawrence Raab

Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things. Big or small, pea-sized or profound. What are you thankful for today?

 

On Nature (and Other Labels)

I’m thinking a lot about nature and poems, the connection and collision.

What is a “nature poem”?

More than butterflies and rainbows. More than catalog and chart.

Who cares? I care!

But really, I’m only recently befuddled by the label. Not bothered, exactly, but unusually curious. Maybe even vexed.

* * *

Is this a nature poem? I think so!
Poem image courtesy of Read A Little Poetry, an excellent resource: here and here.

* * *

I’m co-curator for the 2027 Indian Creek Poetry Walk.

The Poetry Walk is a four-mile path traversing diverse terrain through the city of Hood River, Oregon (where I live). Poems, by local authors, dot the hills and woods along the trail.

Our submission guidelines call for “nature poems.”

[ sidebar: Are you a writer living in the mid Columbia River Gorge region? Send us your nature poems! Details here. Or on facebook: Indian Creek Poetry Walk. ]

I love reading poems! I love the thrill and mystery of each submission. They arrive with no names or context, no warnings or explanation — just like life and love and writing. It’s a delight.

And it’s a great lesson for my own writing. With each reading, I ask: What makes this work? Why does this poem soar and this one sink?

The answer is often elusive but the more I read the more I see, the more I perceive. Increasingly I ask: what is a nature poem?

* * *

We all know the wild geese of Mary Oliver. That’s a nature poem, I say, pointing at the obvious beauty.

And Wendell Berry writes nature. Gary Snyder, too.

And, the classics, of course: John Keats, William Wordsworth, Basho.

But what about Ada Limón, Jane Mead, Sonia Sanchez, Joy Harjo, Alberto Ríos?

These are poets influenced by, woven with, pressed against, nature.

Is everything nature?

* * *

Is this a nature poem? I think so!
Poem image courtesy of Read A Little Poetry, an excellent resource: here and here.

* * *

In an excellent essay, Rob Lewis writes:

“To define the nature poem you first must define nature, which is tricky. The human defining nature takes the pose of someone pointing away from themselves at something else. Yet nature is also the pointer and the pointing.

Nature, if granted its full measure, is properly construed as everything. It is space and time and all the relationships and particulars in between, including stars and sand grains, songbirds and weather, photosynthesis and seahorses, love and anger, lions and gravity, trees, house timbers, kitchen tables. Nature, we could say, is that entity, process and mystery out of which everything arises, including us.”

 Later in the piece, he states:

“But that still leaves us with the false category of the ‘nature poem.’ I think it’s something more like—tear down the walls, break up the categories, open the channels. Allow poetry to flow into science, science into prayer, prayer into nature, nature into poetry, and around and around let it go. Interpenetration is in the nature of things.”

* * *

I applaud the suggestions from Writers Digest. In 5 Tips for Writing Nature Poems, Robert Lee Brewer offers this gold nugget:

“In Paul Muldoon’s Wind and Tree, the poet compares the ways of trees to the ways of humans . . . so that the poem moves from being just an observation of nature to an observation of human nature.”

* * *

Yes, yes, that’s it!

Read that again: . . . more than just an observation of nature to an observation of human nature.

* * *

Is this a nature poem? I think so!
Poem image courtesy of Read A Little Poetry, an excellent resource: here and here.

* * *

More and more, I climb across the terrain and see what a nature poem is not. Not an arrangement of gushing observation, or a catalog charting nature in clinical detail.

More than flowery description, a good nature poem examines the world and makes connections between people and place, asking, how has nature changed me?

* * *

What do you think: What is a nature poem?

Do you have a favorite nature poem or poet?

I’d love to hear from you.

* * *

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

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Thankful Thursday: Try

trying — erasure poem by drew myron

Try — verb

to make an effort

attempt, endeavor, strive

to melt down and procure in a pure state

It’s the most and least I can do.

It’s nothing and everything.

On Thankful Thursday, I take a pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. Attention attracts gratitude, and gratitude expands joy. Please join me.

What are you thankful for today?

* * *

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

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• If you are here, reading this now — thank you!

 

Thankful Thursday: Gifts

I’m thinking of gifts.

Not the blanket I bought as a wedding gift. Or the wine I gave to a friend. But the everyday pleasures: the light of early dawn, hot coffee, a quick smile and easy laugh . . .

It’s so simple, isn’t it? It goes like this:

To notice the world is to see more closely.

To see more closely is to feel more appreciation.

Appreciation leads to gratitude.

Gratitude feels good.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

* * *

And yet, I forget.

I get hurried, buried in worries, get busy, get mired, get lost.

Again and again, I return to the basics:

The world is full.

When I notice, the world offers delights.

When I accept the delights, I feel gratitude.

Gratification is the satisfaction of feeling delight.

Once experienced, gratification — like gratitude — is easy, is everywhere.

* * *

“Gratification is the sensory enchantment of everyday life,” writes Ian Bogost in The Small Stuff: How To Lead A More Gratifying Life. “To enjoy the momentary delights of the physical world, all I have to do is accept the sensory gifts it offers. Think of gratification as something the world gives and that you accept.”

From attention springs appreciation.

From appreciation comes contentment.

Contentment is cousin to gratification.  

This is the gift, the riches, the abundance.

 * * *

“Happiness is the sweetness of desiring what you have, fully aware of its fragility, its brevity and its limits,” says Stephen Grosz in Love’s Labor: How We Make and Break the Bonds of Love.  It isn’t the absence of sadness, but the capacity to hold reality without needing it to be otherwise.”

Oof. Read that again.

Acceptance and appreciation. When we hold them both, we find joy.

This is simple but not always easy.

I keep trying anyway.

  * * *

It’s Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. Please join me.

What are you thankful for today?

For today’s post, additional thanks to: Vicki Hellmer who provided the poem; Rob Walker at The Art of Noticing for sharing the idea of gratification.

Thankful Thursday: Small Stuff

grip, by drew myron

Hello. It’s Thankful Thursday — again, already.

Please join me in  a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Big or small, pea-sized or profound, attention attracts gratitude, and gratitude expands joy, and my gratitude grows when shared with you.

Some days are more difficult than others, to find the good, to sort through the junk.

You know how this goes. It’s the tiny shifts that allow the noise of the world (and your head) to weigh less and the small stuff to mean more. This week gratitude arrived soft, quiet, small:

A walk in early morning.

Catching the eye of a friend in a shorthand of secrets.

A good, strong gin & tonic.

A rush of words without a filter.

An unexpected text from a faraway friend.

The wobble in the voice where trust begins.

His voice on the phone, light, happy.

Standing knee-deep in a cold river.

What are you thankful for today?

* * *

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

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Shaggy Arms & Other Scraps

June — collage poem by drew myron

When the mind is ragged and restless, it soothes the self to stop making sense and start making scraps.

And so, the collage poem is born.

The head goes into some other register when making these postcard-size pieces. It’s a playful stretch of image and word, of disarray and design. My efforts are not so much art as a process that releases a mix of mystery and delight.

Let’s get back to play — in all forms. Let loose. Take leaps. Surprise yourself with what you might make.

Page 21 — collage poem by drew myron

Page 21

Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest

the light — so wild and guiltless —

wore peace.

Focus on light — collage poem by drew myron

Chapter VIII

Focus on light

Create an impractical

piece of special.

* * *

What are you making?
I always enjoy hearing from you.
Send me light, write!

Thankful Thursday: Page 56

On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for page 56.

It’s a simple prompt, shared with me in the offhand way of chance and fancy. When you’re eager, anything is fodder. Or grist. Or meal. Or savior.

Turn to page 56, she said, and randomly pick a line, write it down, and keep writing. For more constraint (and more power), go to page 56, line 6.

Now, because I crave a challenge, every day I pick up a book, magazine, or anything with pages, and flip to page 56, line 6. Like a horoscope, the line becomes both forecast and mystery. What can I make of a single line, a phrase, these fresh words?

The original line is just the start. Once recorded in my journal, the freewriting begins and making sense ends. I take leaps and sweeps and when I get to the end of the run, I extract the shiny bits and write again.

In the flurry of writing and editing, the original line is often gone, or a shadow of itself. And that’s the point! When we’ve grown bored of our own familiar language and patterns, it’s time to dive for new combinations. Page 56 is the launch into new waters.

Feeling stuck? I encourage you to find your page 56, or 24, or 108, or some lucky number. The process is fun and the results may surprise — and that’s when writing is most alive.

Page 56 is buried deep within this poem.

It’s Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. From the grand to the granular, attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy. Please join me. 

What are you thankful for today?

More Writing Prompts:
Distilled
Overwrite
Wordcatching
Cut Up
Headlines
Where I’m From

On Sunday: Why Not You?

Why Not You?

 

If a dream

is water, is wave

is love collecting

light

 

why not you

as moon guiding

our way to the edges

of understanding?

 

In a  small boat

the horizon distant — 

what if you are explorer

of current and swell,

or a hull holding knowledge,

a keel calm and steady?

 

You are dreamer and dream

a rising tide pushing us forward,

the strength of the moon pulling us alive.

— Drew Myron

* * *

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

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Good Books Lately

It’s been a good spell since I’ve shared my latest favorite books. I’ve been reading a lot but it’s been a long slog of eh. As in too many so-so, unfinished books.

Maybe my book selector is off. Or my head rattled with outside life. Maybe the digital world really has ruined me for the long stretches of deep absorption that reading requires. Or perhaps novels are getting more dull and simplistic or, conversely, overly complicated?

Probably not.

Still, all is not lost. Bright spots still shine. Here are a few of my latest favorites:

 FICTION

August Blue, a novel by Deborah Levy

I don’t always understand Deborah Levy, but I love her! Her writing makes jumps in time and tone, and leaps in thought, and I’m working to keep up. But always the prose is poetic, surreal, resonating truth and smart vulnerability.

Good line:

It was like pressing on a bruise. To be so helplessly chained to this old story.

Other Deborah Levy faves:
Swimming Home
Hot Milk  
The Man Who Saw Everything


The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas

Spare, simple, subtle. Nothing happens, slowly, and yet it's an engaging novel that turns a simple apartment hunt into an exploration of a couple searching for more than a place to live.

Good line:

Whenever we talked about this time in our lives, we would be incredulous at our hospitality but also a bit mournful at our loss of curiosity. Our tolerance to listen to anything, to be engaged with the world without calculation.


Thank You For The Music: Stories by Jane McCafferty

Years ago I read Jane McCafferty’s novel One Heart and was wowed. But then I somehow lost track of this writer. Now, I’m back on the hunt to read all her work, and this book of short stories is a keeper. McCafferty makes writing seem effortless, with clear prose that is plain-spoken, and characters that are tender, aching, and true-to-life.

Good line:

I didn’t particularly like his style of conversation — it had that windblown quality, where you feel the person could be talking to anyone.

Brawler: Stories by Lauren Groff

The title tells the truth. These stories are muscular with writing that punches, swings and lifts off the page. The first story in the collection, The Wind, about a woman escaping an abusive marriage, took my breath and held me captive. Way to set a tone!

Also, loved the Notes on each story, located in the back of the book. I’m not one of the purists who believes stories and poems should stand on their own; I love a backstory!

Good line:

I look around and can see it in so many other women, passed down from a time beyond history, this wind that is dark and ceaseless and raging within.

POETRY

Origin Stories: Poems by Sarah Teresa Cook

What a delight to find this beautiful treasure of a book.

The best poems make me want to write my own — and Origin Stories does just that — while also feeding an urgency to read more and faster.

From the hand stitched cover to each carefully considered phrase, this collection is authentic, examined, real, with a self-awareness that carries both wisdom and wounds.

Searching always for
the same answers: affect
versus effect, over-
watered versus under-
watered plant // Can-
not remember how to
mean what I mean / how
to see a different origin
beneath the same result

— from 36 YO FE W HX Anxiety Is Requesting Referral to Initiate BH Services

Read While You Wait, poems by Penelope Scambly Schott and Drew Myron

While hiking Dufur Hill recently, Penelope and I talked about the thrill of finding poetry in unexpected places: in parks, on busses, in bathroom stalls. Poetry should be accessible to all, we said. Let’s get poetry into the world!

(You’ve heard this before, right?).

And so we did.

Read While You Wait is a booklet of poems made especially for the waiting places: laundromats, hospitals, department of motor vehicle lines . . . the world is full of waiting.

The booklet is fun, no-frills, and free. Maybe you’ll find it the next time you renew your driver’s license or wash your undies. But why wait? Send me your address and I’ll pop it in the mail. Signed, sealed, delivered.

* * *

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

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• If you are here, reading this now — thank you.


Thankful Thursday: With Love

It’s a trifecta: Thankful Thursday, Poem In Your Pocket Day, and the last day of National Poetry Month.

Let’s wrap this month up with a bit of love. Not the gushy proclamations but the sincere appreciations that keep daily life humming.

Have you read the Love Poem to Taco Bell? It’s starts like this:

Full-on, no bullshit, no irony, yes Taco Bell 
where I can almost always pull together the 
cash to get dinner, at my brokest 
scrounging up enough change  
for the pillowy warmth of a bean burrito

This gem is by Rebecca Bornstein of Portland, Oregon. Recently featured on poets.org, the poem is making the rounds because it is good, real, and relatable.

Life is full of everyday people, places and things that deserve our attention. May we all be Pablo Neruda, who wrote more than 200 odes that honor ordinary objects, including socks, tuna, tomatoes. His book, Odes to Common Things is a delight.

Love poems, also called odes, are both fun to read and to write.

In the spirit of paying attention, let’s mark this Thankful Thursday by elevating the everyday. Adoration is just appreciation turned up a notch. What are you thankful for today? Go ahead, give it some love.

In the Wild

The 2026 Indian Creek Trail Poetry Walk features 20 poems placed along a walking path in Hood River, Oregon.

On a bus. In a laundromat. Along a sidewalk or an alley.

Let’s get poetry out of the books and into the world!

* * *

Long an advocate for poetry-in-public, I’ve cheered on writers and artists taking poetry to the streets:

In Arizona, Shawnte Orion hosts poetry readings in laundromats, bars, and abandoned buildings.

In Washington, Paul Nelson invites people to share poetry on postcards and in museums.

In New Mexico, Dale Harris and Scott Wiggerman host the Poets’ Picnic, an annual event that features haiku-style poems written on brown paper tags and hung from trees.

In Colorado, an artist partners with a poet to create bold murals in downtown Denver.

And in almost every city, street poets are producing on-the-spot poems in old-fashioned handwriting or with creaky typewriters.

* * *

Poetry is too wide and wonderful to grow stale in dusty books that few may crack.

Open the doors! Let poetry in — or, rather, out!

* * *

Take a walk with me.

I want to share my latest poetry-in-public project: The 2026 Indian Creek Trail Poetry Walk.

The Walk features 20 poems placed along a four-mile walking path traversing the town of Hood River, Oregon.

The poems were added to the trail in April to celebrate National Poetry Month and will remain for six months. Poems are written by Columbia River Gorge poets and are accompanied by images from area photographers.

Now in its second year, the Poetry Walk is a unique collaboration between Hood River County Library District and Hood River Valley Parks and Recreation District.

You can view the poems, poets, photos, and map here.

* * *

In the spirit of poem-hunting, I’m thrilled to hear the new initiative from Oregon’s Poet Laureate.

Ellen Waterston, who was recently appointed to a second two-year term, wants to see public display of poems — from permanent art installations to poetry walks — in communities across the state.

The effort, called P!PP (Poetry in Public Places), is a celebration of poetry and, she says, “underscores what an accessible and durable art form poetry is.”

Write on!

* * *

Are you spotting poetry in public? Or placing poems in the wild?

I’d love to hear from you. Write to me!

Artist Tracy Weil partnered with Poet Drew Myron for this 2020 mural as part of Crush Walls Urban Street Art Festival in Denver, Colorado.

Detail of mural in Denver, Colorado. Created in 2020, during the covid pandemic.

Thankful Thursday: The Relief of Good Writing

How did I miss this powerful show? 

I’m strongly against trauma packaged for entertainment so I was relieved and pleased to discover that Unbelievable is not at all what I expected. Based on true events, this 2019 drama prizes victim experience over voyeurism. 

The eight-part series, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning piece An Unbelievable Story of Rape, is written by established novelists Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman and screenwriter Susannah Grant — and it shows. The writing is real, and the work comes to life with actors Toni Collette, Merritt Wever, Kaitlyn Dever, and Danielle Macdonald.

Writers T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, of ProPublica, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for their “examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures” in the rape investigations. Their work was featured on This American Life, and created the foundation for the Netflix docuseries.

I offer details of the story behind the show because good writing matters. Writing, when it is solid, strong, nuanced, complex and clear, forms the basis for understanding, for empathy and illumination, for real and systemic change.

Because so much of our televised entertainment is now broad sweeps for easy laughs or airbrushed perfection that makes everyone too good, too bad, too beautiful, it’s a relief to stumble upon subtlety and complication. I rally for good writing because it creates resonance, which creates trust, which creates connection and understanding.

And yet good writing is rare. I can count on one hand television shows with writing (and acting) that elevates and resonates; The Wire and Treme, both by journalist-turned-screenwriter David Simon, will always top my list.

On this Thankful Thursday, I’m thankful for art that addresses and reveals, and for good writing, directing, and acting.

Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things — big or small, pea-sized or profound. 

What are you thankful for today?