Poemcrazy Freeing Your Life with Words

Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge is a poet and teacher who conducts workshops privately, as well as in the California Poets in the Schools program. Her exuberant, critically acclaimed teaching guide takes instructors, writers, and general readers into the very heart and intensity of life and the craft of expressing what one feels therefrom through the written word.

Susan G. Wooldridge conducts writing workshops privately, through Poets & Writers, Inc., and with the California Poets in the Schools program. She is the author of Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words, a Book Sense Pick, a long-running Quality Paperback Book Club selection, and a Writer's Digest Book Club selection. She has also written a chapbook of poems, Bathing with Ants.

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Ordinary Magic

xii

1 FOLLOWING WORDS

outlaw on a poem walk

2

(3)

Mr. Mabie

5

(4)

collecting words and creating a wordpool

9

(5)

the answer squash

14

(5)

most mad and moonly

19

(4)

gas, food, longing

23

(4)

being here

27

(3)

it looks like

30

(3)

naming wild hippo

33

(3)

our real names

36

(6)

opening shots

42

(2)

on a night picnic

44

(4)

2 LISTENING TO OURSELVES

the poemfish

48

(3)

full moon me

51

(5)

Walt Whitman

56

(2)

Plum Nelly

58

(4)

where do you come from

62

(4)

from my grandmother

66

(3)

lying to tell the truth

69

(5)

snowflakes and secrets

74

(2)

listening to our shadow

76

(4)

what's my image

80

(4)

coyote and the wild

84

(4)

poems and the body

88

(3)

poems are alive

91

(5)

3 HI THERE STARS

hi there stars

96

(3)

Terra: from dirt to mother earth

99

(2)

Paul who breaks pencils

101

(2)

the Plains way

103

(2)

I dress myself with rain

105

(4)

bring me magic

109

(4)

Mojo-squeegie-abacus-del morpho

113

(2)

skin spinoff

115

(3)

listening in Thermalito

118

(3)

misfits' castle of lightning

121

(3)

please don't understand

124

(4)

4 OPEN THE WINDOW

open the window

128

(4)

stirring the sky

132

(3)

who were you in my dream?

135

(3)

collage

138

(4)

the center of the house

142

(2)

grocery weeping

144

(3)

joywriting

147

(2)

the image angel

149

(5)

the great Magus

154

(2)

controlled abandon

156

(8)

poem sound and song

164

(4)

abracadabra

168

(6)

5 LIGHTS AND MYSTERIES

the ginkgo

174

(3)

Home Song

177

(2)

fear of poetry

179

(3)

dreamsense

182

(5)

being visited by words

187

(5)

the blue socks

192

(2)

bending light

194

(2)

apo-ka-tas'-tasis

196

(4)

catching myself

200

(1)

caterpillar poets

201

(4)

a seng song pot of possibilities

205

(1)

the poem bridge

206

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Poemcrazy Freeing Your Life with Words

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials