Category: Reflection

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Celebrating Living Poets: Kate Baer

She’s a poet with a playlist for everything. She finds messages of wisdom in her hate mail replies and turns it into found poetry. She’s a mother, a wife, and a writer, and she’ll make you stop and think. The living poet I’m celebrating today is Kate Baer, who was first recommended to me by my friend and small group writing buddy Glenda Funk. I started with her collection I Hope This Finds You Well and then read all the others, and I’m anxiously awaiting whatever comes next. Hers are dessert poems with a bit of a sharp kick, like a tangy lemon tart or a bowl of the sweetest watermelon sprinkled with Tajin. It hits you square in the womanhood solidarity in its delicious aftertaste.

You can read more about Kate Baer here. Be sure to scroll down deep enough in the article to listen to her playlists – they’re all linked, and I leave her writing playlist on repeat whether I’m writing or working in my cubicle with my noise-cancelling headphones (perfect for when a colleague is making a phone call or having a conversation).

Advice on writing from Kate can be found here. Another interview here.

Snapshot

The moment before the photograph

you turn and lift your face

in the blue eye of winter

fat with love, drunk with adoration

eyes up, arms out

walk out into the evening and sing

no music. Just the world and all its noise. You.

I never wanted anything more than you.

Taken from: The Bridesmaid’s Song; After; Today; Grown Alice; Undivided Attention; The Protagonist Remembers; How it Will Happen; For My Son on His 13th Birthday.

Poets for Days 11-20
Another Sneak Peek of what has been and what’s to come…..
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Celebrating Living Poets: Hannah Rosenberg

The living poet I’m celebrating on this 19th day of The Slice of Life Challenge at Twowritingteachers.org is Hannah Rosenberg. She is the author of the collection entitled Same, containing poems from which I am using her existing lines to create an original Cento poem.

You can read more about Hannah Rosenberg on her website. Or, follow her on Instagram at @hannarowrites. You can also read this interview to learn more about Hannah.

Souls of Women

My life is filled with the souls of women.

They made pasta and Alfredo sauce, bought chips,

building a life we knew was fleeting.

It’s nice to know there are people out there, even if they are not.

Taken from: Marriage of Friends; Once Upon a Time in an Apartment in Boston; Roommates in my Twenties; Always at Home with Them.

A Sneak peek of living poets Days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Misha Collins

As we move through March, here’s a St. Patrick’s Day hat tip to living poet Misha Collins. He’s an actor, a poet, and a lot of other things such as a lifeguard, motorcyclist, and clean eater. I’ve added a link to some more information about his life, below, and I’m using his collection Some things I still can’t tell you to compose a Cento poem from his work. Unfortunately, this book was a divorce announcement – which doesn’t make me happy, but it does show how poetry can be used for so many purposes in our lives. In the peace of a dove on a branch, in the beauty of summer rain steaming off the hot asphalt, and even in the heartbreaking pain of divorce.

You can read more about Misha Collins here.

Used Book Parade

For the first time in three years

yesterday I read a used book

looking just the same

and perfect

and needed to cry for a scene

that that parade of it all might ignite me.

My Cento lines are taken from: Housekeeping; Reread; Alessandra; Way-finding; The Center; Taxi

A sneak peek at poets for days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Chelsea Rathburn

Last night’s Slicer Meet-Up was a great way to meet three slicers I’ve never met on camera before – Cheryl, Chris, and Lori – and “see” Lainie again! Even through I read their blogs and feel I know a few things about them, it’s such a deeper experience when you can hear voices and see eyes. Thank you, Lainie, for setting this up, and a heartfelt Cheers to friends I know a little better now!


This month, I’m celebrating living poets by writing a Cento poem from a chosen collection of their work. I’m proud to say that the poet today is from my own home state.

Look closely at the photos of the books by Chelsea Rathburn below, and you will notice that there are color tabs marking many of the pages. When this current Poet Laureate of Georgia came to visit our local coffee shop during National Poetry Month two years ago, I tabbed the pages that I requested she share during her reading. You can read more about Chelsea Rathburn here.

Ol’ Possum Playing Poker, Drinking Bourbon, and Smoking Cigars In His Old Age

I picture him still sitting in some cafe

women in rustling skirts, old men with walkers

And that big curved room with the water lilies.

Hateful? He had a mean streak, maybe

thin tail pointing toward us, face turned away.

Lines for this poem were taken from, in this order: The Talker; Eclogue with Paris and Prayer; Eclogue with a Line from a Postcard; Eclogue with Street Theatre; Small Deaths.

A sneak peek at poets for days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Victoria Hutchins


We are nearly halfway through the Slice of Life Challenge 2026, and I can’t believe how quickly we are moving! I’m enjoying all the things I’m learning from bloggers all around the world and connecting with them through the power of words.

I’ve sent both my daughters a copy of Make Believe: poems for hoping again by Victoria Hutchins. It’s one of those poetry collections that right from the first page, you’re nodding in agreement with full head movement even if you’re in a room all alone. You have full conversations with Victoria, as if she were your best friend or even your sister. After you read each poem, it’s your turn to reply, and you do – – imagining she is right there at the table with a cup of coffee, wearing pajamas and eating a Mason jar of overnight oats while you chat the morning away with her in your head.

Victoria Hutchins rose to poetic fame on Instagram and TikTok. You can listen to an interview with her and read more about her here. Hutchins offers hope and encouragement in dark days through each poem.

Listen

At first, I didn’t recognize her.

Almost everyone is a stranger until you zoom in or pan out.

The life of it has hollow eyes.

That’s the thing about imaginary friends.

That’s by design.

Listen closely and maybe you’ll realize – it isn’t your voice.

Taken from these poems, in this order: god on Main Street; panda aspen grove; is the party dead already?; god as imaginary friend; blindside; whose hate did you swallow?

Sneak peek of books for days 10-20

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Celebrating Living Poets: Joy Sullivan

It’s Day 14 of the Slice of Life Challenge, and I am celebrating a different living poet each day throughout the month of March. As I curated the list of poets whose collections I wanted to use to inspire my writing, I selected a diverse range of writers – young/old, men/women of differing faiths, lifestyles, and races. Today, I’m celebrating Joy Sullivan, whose collection was like eating a carton of ice cream. I couldn’t stop at a serving size – – I devoured the whole decadent bowl of poetry in one sitting – ice cream, whipped cream, caramel and chocolate drizzle, nuts and a cherry – and I see myself rereading this one frequently in carton-sized servings.

You can read more about Joy Sullivan here and here. She also has a Substack, Necessary Salt. Since Amanda Gorman’s reading at Biden’s inauguration where she wore the yellow coat and made poetry ring in ears across this nation and the rise of a generation of viral social media poets like Joy Sullivan, Lyndsay Rush, and others, including spoken word poets like Clint Smith and Sarah Kay, and event writers such as Chris Vitiello who appears as The Poetry Fox in a fox suit with an old typewriter and clicks out poems on the spot for folks who give him a word, we have seen a resurgence of poetry that makes it no longer a dead man’s indulgence. These younger writers are breathing life back into something that, for a few generations now, has met with fear and intimidation on the ears of high school and college students who were forever being required to analyze it as if it were a frog being dissected.

But poetry isn’t some ill-fated lab frog destined to be gutted and pinned flap by flap to the black tarry pan and exposed as parts and pieces by hands wearing vinyl gloves and gagging the whole way through it. No, poetry is ice cream and decadent cake, old dogs and puppies, blankets and candles and mostly arms that reach out, take your hand, meet you wherever you are when you think you’re alone in your feelings, and draw you in for an embrace. It coaxes out emotions you didn’t know you could feel. Step into this book and some of the other living poets and discover a pulse you never even knew you had running through your blood. Start at your local library and arrange inter-library loans. Keep a ranking of those you like, and then, out of the blue, there will be that one poet whose lines are a fish net, and you’re the fish. You will be forever hooked. There’s a word for it……

There’s A Word for It

What do you call nostalgia for all the places

beneath this wing

of swallowtails, sow thistle

wild as grass, so cool and soft

it softens something?

Taken from: Ghost Heart; The Cashier at the Gas Station Asks Where I’m From; Of Wildflowers; Tiger Farm; Sockeye

A sneak peek of the poets I’m celebrating Days 10-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Lyndsay Rush

She calls herself Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin. Lyndsay Rush is the living poet I’m celebrating today during the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge. You can read all the posts each day at www.twowritingteachers.org as writers blog throughout March and post their links on the community site. If I had a colleague at the water cooler flattening her hand to admire her nail polish and declaring that she was so damn sure she would never read a poem she liked, this is the book I’d hand her before retreating around the corner and peering over the top of the cubicle at her in her chair devouring these poems and proving herself wrong.

Lyndsay Rush, author of A Bit Much, got her start as an Instagram poet. Click her name to read the interview that gives more information about Lyndsay. I’ve used her collection to create a Cento poem by writing several of her existing lines into a new arrangement.

The Dark Doorway

You heard it here first:

Otters hold hands while they sleep

If you’re feeling weird lately

stand in the dark doorway of

The Gospel I was raised on

for the nonbelievers

and drive off into the sunset

Lines in this Cento are taken from these poems, in this order: Maybe Crocs are Okay; Loving Each Otter; Help; Someone to Eat Chips With; His Body is Bread and So is Mine; Beware of Lost Boys; A Spell for Success

A sneak peek of poets days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: David Elliott

I love books in verse – especially biographies, particularly this one: Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc, by David Elliott. One of my favorite things about this particular book is that it tells the format of each poem in the back of the book. Elliott writes in several signature forms, including shape poetry. Another great thing: this book is part of a series – so when its final page is turned, there will be another one waiting.

You can read more about David Elliott here and here.

I Am

The harp and that halo, all those things

from that bright morning to this ~

I am a fortress.

I am a helmet on a strange head.

Taken from: Saint Michael; Joan; Virginity; Her Hair.

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Celebrating Living Poets: Maggie Smith

Welcome to Day 9 of the Slice of Life Challenge! I’m spending my month slicing about the living poets whose collections I enjoy reading – and using one of their collections to write Cento poetry, composed of existing lines reworked to form a new poem. Today, I’m sharing a Cento taken from the lines of poems in Maggie Smith’s collection entitled Goldenrod.

Maggie Smith appears in an interview here as a graduate of OSU.

Becoming

I am becoming my mother here

crossing a field, wading.

If you feel yourself receding, receding,

whatever your name is, you are with your own kind.

When are we most ourselves, and when the least?


My Cento poem features lines taken from these poems, in this order: Slipper, Threshold, Poem Beginning with a Retweet; Goldenrod; Ohio Cento.

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Celebrating Living Poet Miranda Cowley Heller

This month during the Slice of Life Challenge, I’m featuring some of my favorite poetry books by living poets and writing Cento poetry each day using the existing lines from poems in each collection to form a new poem. Miranda Cowley Heller rose to writing fame as author of The Paper Palace, a novel selected by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. Turns out, she’s an amazing poet as well!

You can read more about Miranda Cowley Heller here and here .

Family Secrets

Inside the case were all the photos

Alone at the kitchen table, I still

dig myself out of the sink

and my children cry blood tears for me.

From poems in this order: Salvage; The Taste of Pennies; Half-Life; and The Earth is Flat

A sneak peek of the first ten days of living poets I’m celebrating this month