Author Archives: mnies24

Join me for a book signing on May 18 4:00-6:00 pm CST at Book Smart in Ashley, ND. As you might assume, I’ll have books to buy and sign. I’ll chat about how growing up on my family’s generational homestead near Ashley helped inspire my poetry.

I just got word that I didn’t qualify as even a finalist for a chapbook competition.  It is hard to accept such news, but it is hardly news from a historical perspective. Writers will encounter obstacles to success and publication until the day there are no writers, or perhaps equally as chilling and unlikely, no […]

There’s something cathartic about using a pen and paper, though I prefer to use a number two pencil—the light scrape and instant change on the page. Slowly drawing letters like art, my mind races and catches up to the script. A computer provides near instant, as fast as I can type, punctuation to thought. No […]

Pastiche – artistry mimicking the style of another This is a good word with a strong beginning and subtle ending. It comes from French, as so many English words do thanks to a great degree to William the Conqueror. Google says its use has increased more recently. I wish I’d discovered it earlier, as I […]

More than one person has recommended the Dead Poets Society to me, or asked if I’ve seen that movie, when I tell them I write poetry. I haven’t seen it. I’d like to, I’ve heard Robin Williams is great. He’s remembered for being funny, but he could play a serious role as good as anyone. […]

Prince George’s County Memorial Library System is archiving the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic by collecting stories, photographs, videos, and other materials. I sent a poem to the collection about a swim outing our family made a couple of weeks ago at the Prince Georges Sports & Learning Complex. So often in life, little moments foster the […]

The American world has been bridled into itself. Pandemic responses have, to varying degrees, brought us closer to ourselves, and perhaps more fatefully, to our dinner plates. Baking has taken a new role in forced re-discovery. Flour sales are up. Cooking supplies are selling fast. There are anecdotal details that the ovens of a thousand […]

I was listening to an poetry reading by Richard Wilbur–I suppose all of these are old now. But he had a beautiful poem called “Seed Leaves” which appropriately describes a seed getting leaves. The meat of the poem and its captivation lie in “ramify,” its final word truly used. There are words that we use […]

I saw Fletcher’s Cove in a parenting blog. I’d wanted to visit it since then. But it’s in northwest DC, and I live northeast of DC by a mile. So I pick and choose when I go out that way. My friend was riding his bike on the C&O Canal Trail and we met him. […]

Surely you’ve experienced reading a sentence, paragraph, page, maybe more without remembering what you’ve read, because your mind was on something else? I read a whole book, Ivanhoe, and came to the final page without remembering the first. It was probably due to my reading it at night before bedtime, and snoozing in and out […]