I like to approach ways that I write and pieces that I write from different angles. You don’t always get the best perspective straight on. Sometimes the most interesting things happen after you play with the form. My work-in-progress novel, (Three Prayers) began because I couldn’t let go of this picture book manuscript I’d written about a chimney swift falling down my chimney and into my house. The manuscript wouldn’t sell, but the words and images wouldn’t leave my mind. So I let them flow freely, and now I have a novel (that will hopefully be more publishable) that includes the evocative image of the chimney swift.
The poem below was used in a more utilitarian manner. While I was putting together the skit book Skitsophrenia as an editor, I needed to fill a gap. I pulled this poem that had been published years earlier and made it into an artsy skit. Here is my poem as published in Moody Monthy, December of 1986.
