Why We Tell Stories

Because when our children grow up we can no longer strap them into car seats, which means they’re free to roam the earth as they please, and which sometimes means they down 5 shots of vodka with their new college roommates even though they promised themselves that...

A Little Light, a Tree & a Breeze

 Day after day, day after still day,The summer has begun to pass away… -from Summer’s Elegy, by Howard Nemerov I can’t be sure, but I think we’ve come to the part of the summer where we’re tilting a little too heavily toward the fall. You...

Poetry Saves the Day * Meet Alison Luterman

25 years ago I was introduced to a world of poets who would change everything I thought I knew about poetry – which wasn’t much. I didn’t have a traditional education – grew up in hippy alternative schools in Los Angeles – didn’t...

Why You Should Pick Me

Mostly we use poetry to inspire and jump start our Wild Writing classes over here at 27 Powers, but the other day I came across a letter my then 10-year-old Zoe wrote to her friends at school telling them why they should vote for her for student council. It captured...

The Trouble with Words

A writer friend and I were walking recently and discussing the challenge of writing about deeply personal experiences. We agreed that writing about the important events or people in our lives was a way to unpack and understand them better. That was good. On the other...