A playful poem full of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, assonance, homophone, ambiguity, imagery, and imagination of a shepherd and sheep, set in the Scottish Highlands.

A light-hearted poem about the novelty of fortune cookies and the humor of finishing off their words of wisdom with an all-to-familiar twist.

A simple poem of emotion.

The ghazal (pronounced “guzzle”) is a form of amatory poem or ode use here. It originates in Arabic poetry. Medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poet. In the Persian tradition, each couplet was of the same meter and length, and the subject matter included both erotic longing and religious belief or mysticism.

The late Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, Gabriela Mistral, was born this week in 1889. This series of free-form haikus follows my journey into her Andean birthplace, deep within the Valle de Elqui.

Poetry has a very particular relationship with time. Sometimes we can feel the instance of a curious corner of an experience, even from years past.

This poem is written in the classical sonnet form. The setting is northwest Costa Rica, following an afternoon excursion from the Pacific Coast up into the mountains of the Hojancha canton. This area was originally inhabited by the Chorotega indigenous tribe, who occupied the Nicoya Peninsula during the pre-Columbian era; their tribal reach extended to Lake Nicaragua.

The challenges with music, of course, can range from understanding music theory to simply having the perseverance to practice, yet despite those challenges, the rewards of learning make the journey worth it. When I was a young adult, the move from piano to learning how to play the guitar felt so foreign, so unconventional, until, of course, the right teacher came into my life, breaking things down into chords, and fingerpicking styles, and rhythms, removing for me the secrets of the guitar. This is an ode to that teacher, Lee.

Written in the very structured poetic rondeau form, this poem looks at lost artifacts of the Texas Hill Country as symbolic of the region’s harsh nature.

This poem snapshots the unforgettable sights and sounds of fall duck hunting within the wooded sloughs of northeast Texas alongside man’s best friend.

Today’s poem looks at dream states and it’s written in the Luc Bat form, a Vietnamese poetic form that means “six-eight” where the poem alternates in lines of six and eight syllables with a rhyme scheme that renews at the end of every eight-syllable line and rhymes on the sixth syllable of both lines

In 2018, the Chilean Writer’s Society (SECH) invited me to Chile as a poet, with a permanent invitation to return each year. Its Fourth Region department is named after Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American ever to receive the Nobel Laureate in Literature. A rural teacher in the Andean mountains, Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (April 7, 1889 – January 10, 1957) adopted “Gabriela Mistral” as a pseudonym from her favorite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral. She acquired the nom de plume as she feared her loss of work as a teacher should her identity become known. Her birthplace is the Valle del Elqui, a mystical, magical labyrinth of Andean mountains filled with green valleys of pisco grapes and the occasional small village, complete with huaso (Chilean countrymen and skilled horsemen) riding throughout its streets. We visited her birthplace in Vicuña and her school house and grave site in Monte Grande.