What does it say when "Peter Peter pumpkin eater" is the only thing that comes to mind when I think about pumpkin poetry? I mean please, can a nursery rhyme be any more offensive than that one? Pumpkin shell indeed. Luckily, there are other pumpkin rhymes and I'm hoping one of them will get stuck in my head soon and rid me of Peter and his patriarchal ways.

There are lines of poetry so powerful, so soul shaping that one must carry them in one's memory -- or at the very least post them on the corkboard in the kitchen; or tuck them into the little clips holding up the bathroom mirror so everyday the poet can console or confront you while you clean your morning-and-night teeth.These poems are what I have come to think of of as "plainsight poetry," that is, verses which must be kept at easy access. The one I most need now is this:

Poets were my first priests, and poetry itself my first altar. -Mary KarrSince the Enlightenment Era we've been very busy pursuing knowledge--and correspondingly with arguing over which group has cornered the market on getting-it-right. Now that we've moved into a post-enlightenment, post-modern millennium, many of us are realizing that facts are slippery creatures. Suddenly our perspectives shift and we see that what is true for you is so very often not true for me...or the other way around...or both things in the same breath-taking moment.

One of my oldest and dearest friends died last month, after what seemed like an all-to-brief and unfairly fatal illness; this post is about her, about friendship and about what we shared.

I can still remember one of the very first poems I wrote. I think it was in first grade that I penned this beauty: There was a howling wind It never seemed to stop. And then one summer day It bumped into a tree -- kerplop! As you can imagine, the editors of Poetry have been pestering me for submissions ever since.

Not only is April National Poetry Month it is also National Poetry Writing Month. For poets and poetry bloggers it means writing one or more poem a day for the month of April. Poems are being written by text, photo, audio, video and all permutations in between. In celebration I want to tell you of the day that a poem saved me from being depressed in the Valley.

I have heard the name MacArthur Foundation for as long as I have been watching public television and public radio. To be honest, it didn't mean anything to me. Perhaps it was reverse elitism or something.

As a Canadian, American Thanksgiving always seemed so...big. It seems like such a bigger event than our own harvest festival Thanksgiving held more than a month earlier. When I was a kid the difference in dates was so very confusing. I remember reading a book where a character talked about Christmas decorations coming out right after Thanksgiving and my response was, "What? Before Halloween???" Needless to say I've since learned a lot more about American Thanksgiving (I still don't get the football association, but then I don't really get football). What better way to celebrate it than to point out some Thanksgiving books?

Truly fifteen years ago, after writing poetry and fiction most of my life, I stopped. There we many reasons at the time—all of which made sense—but the one that I did not consciously understand then, which I see so clearly now, was that I was afraid. I was afraid of my own voice, afraid of what I might say, and afraid I might—because I had had some true success-be heard. And so I stopped writing poems and stories, wrote only articles and essays, instead, and then, not many years later, left writing to work in technology.