Blog

Posted by rhoff1949 on April 20, 2007 in Featured

I want to say so much in response to this writing by my Stonecoast colleague, poet Kazim Ali, but there’s really nothing to add, so I post it here without comment. Poetry is DangerousKazim Ali On April 19, after a day of teaching classes at Shippensburg University, I went out to my car and grabbed […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on April 15, 2007 in Featured

Last October I had the chance to read my work as part of the Fifth International Festival of Poetry in El Salvador. Although I had sent a number of poems to the Fundacion Poetas for translation, their translator managed to accomplish only one. When I arrived, I had only one poem which could be read […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on April 9, 2007 in Featured

“Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example-I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation.” — Nazim Hikmet Some months ago I was part of an extraordinary evening at the Boston Public Library, sponsored by PEN New […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on April 4, 2007 in Featured

I sent this short poem to several newspapers as a letter to the editor but none chose to print it. Is that because I explicitly call bigots bigots? Or do they just shy away from verse? I don’t pretend it’s a terrific poem, but there are some times when you want the broad brush and […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on March 31, 2007 in Featured

Today I just want to bring attention to the work of Baron Wormser, one of our finest poets. I was talking to an otherwise literate friend the other day, and I mentioned Wormser’s work to him. Who? he said, which is evidence of a wrong worth righting. Wormser has been a “poet’s poet” for a […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on March 30, 2007 in Featured

EVERYONE Columbus thought he discovered the Indies so he called the people he encountered Indians but he was wrong; he had discovered the working class. He took their sage,not their advice;it smoldered like ragebut smelled nice. One of the Santa Maria’s crew, avaricious and schooled in flattery, suggested to Columbus that he try calling them […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on March 20, 2007 in Featured

From time to time I may post something I’ve written that seems not a part of anything else, not a poem or story I want to otherwise publish. This is one of those things, a parable. HOW THE DEVIL GOT HIS HORNS A jackass, his long ears lying back flat and his big teeth clacking […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on March 16, 2007 in Featured

Woodpile 15 X 18 Oils by Evangeline Murray I have been thinking about the word PREMISES today. It’s part of my attempt to teach myself how to think. (I do not think that much of what passes for thinking is thinking, really.) I have been fascinated by the word as it denotes both a locale, […]

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Welcome to my blog

Posted by rhoff1949 on February 24, 2007 in Featured

I have wanted to start this blog for some time. A lot of other writers, many of them friends, have their own. Monkey see, monkey do. How hard can it be? I asked myself. But my self said, “just what you need, bonehead, another project.” But, alas, I never learn. So here we are. But […]

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