Breaking Lines

by | Mar 1, 2018 | Bubbler

a commentary on craft, by Barrett Warner  My buddy E. J. loves his iambic apartment in Catonsville. “Ten feet to the kitchen, ten feet to the bathroom, ten feet to the living room,” he says, grinning like a baseball in October. It’s the sort of home where everything...

Cover Letters

by | Feb 1, 2018 | Bubbler, FSR

 I was so nervous submitting poems to the Carolina Quarterly in 1981 that I composed four slightly different versions of a cover letter, and—overcome by terrific anxieties and wanting to be done with the whole affair—hastily included all of them with my...
Take a Shower with Your Poem

Take a Shower with Your Poem

by | Jan 1, 2018 | Bubbler

When you care about someone there’s always a better way to word a complaint. Instead of saying, “You stink,” you might say, “Let’s take a bath together.” Think of it as revision. Nothing says “I love you” like a little editing. Recently, my editor asked me to spend at...