“While excess can be fun when writing nature poems, many poets find minimalism is preferable. Emily Dickinson wrote several nature poems — often in fewer than 10 lines — including ‘Who robbed the woods’ and ‘My river runs to thee.’ One of the most concise poetic forms is also a nature poem: the haiku! Many poets debate the number of lines and syllables (not everyone believes in the 5-7-5), but every haiku poet agrees haiku should focus on a brief moment, provide a sense of enlightenment, and offer a cutting and season word.” Excerpt from “Poetic Asides” by Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest, July/August 2024. More about haiku and nature writing: Nature Journaling Crystallize a Moment Why I Love Writing Ekphrastic Poetry #justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter
Tag: Dave Seter
Nature Journaling
“With nothing more than a pen and a notebook, nature journaling can help you slow down and create a reference you can call upon to bring your reader into the worlds you build on the page.” Excerpted from “How Nature Journaling Can Help Your Writing,” by Maria Bengtson. Writer’s Digest, July/August 2024. Go outside with pen and notebook, get settled, observe, use sensory detail to enhance your writing. Bengtson suggests using these prompts I notice . . . I wonder . . . It reminds me of . . . “Your observations will create a reference that will help you transport your reader from their cozy chair to the world on your pages. Sketch a tree or flower or a critter you see. The work of creating a rough map, schematic, or stick-figure diagram forces you to think about how things are related to one another, and how the environment…
The Big Windows Review
The Big Windows Review is the literary magazine of the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College (WCC), in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “We post a new poem or piece of short prose on the site every Tuesday and Friday. Then, four times a year, we’ll bundle up those poems and prose pieces to make a free digital issue of The Big Windows Review.” Thanks to Dave Seter for letting me know about this. Dave’s writing, “Weightless Hitchhiker” was published in the April 5, 2024 issue of The Big Windows Review.
The RavensPerch
From the founder, Gretna Wilkinson, Ph.D.: The RavensPerch is an online international literary and visual arts magazine. We welcome established as well as emerging writers, tomorrow’s stars. TRP is unique in that the platform brings the literary world together across generations: a home for adults, young adults and children. We publish poetry, fiction, non-fiction and visual art. We are interested in writing that makes us react — all the way from calmly to boisterously. We even give you permission to break our hearts and make us ask for more. Thank you, Dave Seter, for letting me know about The RavensPerch. Dave has four poems in the February 9, 2023 issue.
Abandoned Mine
“Abandoned Mine” is looking for: Poems that are accessible and understandable. Poems people will want to re-read. Poems people will want to share with family and friends, neighbors and co-workers. Poems people will remember for the rest of their lives. Many people today are of the belief that they don’t “get” poetry, regarding a poem with almost the same trepidation they might regard, say, a complicated physics equation. In fairness to those many people, some poems are dense. Or cryptic. Or full of confusing words. (Or all three.) Such poems can be intimidating. Such poems can sometimes dissuade people from reading more poetry . . . more. Submission Guidelines Thank you, Dave Seter, for your important and thoughtful poem, “Language of Chemicals and Probable Cause” in Abandoned Mine.
Bright Dead Things
Dave Seter’s review of “Bright Dead Things” by Ada Limón: In life’s trajectory from childhood story hour to adult happy hour, good storytellers are in demand. While some theories of poetry argue for silencing the “I” of authorship, Ada Limón’s brand of poetry is personal and emotionally honest. If a mere book of poetry can invite the reader into the kitchen for coffee and a story, Limón’s new collection Bright Dead Things does just that. Bright Dead Things explores the duality of joy and suffering. The phrase “bright dead things” comes from the collection’s poem “I Remember the Carrots.” Limón writes: “When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots, / their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.” The child, wanting to possess this beauty, rips out the immature crop and is scolded by her father. The poem expresses regret but also resistance to a life of passivity. Right out of…
Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences
“The title of my poetry collection comes from the last line in my poem ‘Open Range’ which explores my drive from Boise to the Duck Valley Reservation to work on a mine reclamation project. I experienced that part of the Western United States with all the complications of disappearing culture, including among the last stretches of unfenced or ‘open’ range, and the ascendant culture of hard rock mining and appetite for copper.” —Dave Seter, Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences Reviews of “Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences“ “The title of Seter’s captivating collection may remind you of Whitman’s ‘I Sing the Body Electric’ from Leaves of Grass, but where Whitman celebrates the human physical body, Seter’s poems, in party, decry the effect humans have had on nature and revel in nature itself. Electricity runs throughout the pages, from ‘Open Range,’ where the speaker meets a free-range steer…
Nighthawks
Nighthawks by Katherine Hastings reviewed by David Seter. Bursting from a railway tunnel into daylight I’ve often been shocked into the brightness of living. Trees seem leafier. Coffee shops beckon. Katherine Hastings takes the reader along for such a ride in her second collection Nighthawks. The journey progresses from New York City to Hastings’ home turf of Sonoma County, California, with stops along the way. A critic shaking off the dust of library stacks might be tempted to call Hastings a poet’s poet. After all, the collection’s first poem “Central Park Zoo” begins “Dear Garcia Lorca” and concludes not much has changed since the poet’s visit to New York City in 1929. While a student at Columbia University, Lorca witnessed first-hand Black Tuesday, the stock market crash. In Hastings’ poem a llama paces its enclosure in the zoo with “no one to speak llama to.” A woman sits on a bank’s…
Blue Lake Review
Sonoma County poet Dave Seter has a poem “Relative Strangers” in the Blue Lake Review (online journal), November 2020 issue. Blue Lake Review Our goal is to bring compelling, meaningful, insightful fiction and poetry to you every month. Something you can ponder and gnaw on. Something to bring light, or at least, growth and understanding to our readers on a regular basis. No frivolous pieces here. Your time is too valuable. We’re serious about our words, and are selective in what we present to you, sifting through the mountains of words to pull out the diamonds. Submission Guidelines You, too, can see your writing in Blue Lake Review. Write. Revise. Polish. Submit!
Collage in Poetry . . . Prompt #529
I would like to share collage in writing with you, some things I learned from the poet Dave Seter. His poem, “Fargo Airport, Waiting in a Bar” in The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing is an example of using collage in poetry. The lines in italics in his poem are from signs on the wall and on the label on a bottle. He seamlessly incorporates “lines from others” into his poetry. Look around you . . . what writing do you see that you can use in your writing? Perhaps: A book title, a greeting card, writing on décor, writing on a tissue box, or a piece of mail. Or: A note you have written, writing on a coffee mug, a sign on a wall. A label on a jar, a can, or a bottle. You can also use song lyrics as a jumping off point for…