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Shy

All my life, I’d been shy, and I wasn’t about to change that.

So You’re Thinking of Getting an MFA . . .

If you’re going to take a degree, take one from the best school you can.

Storyteller and Showrunner Clyde Phillips

I think of each story as a big circle that’s all around me and I’m in the center.

Ten Landscapes

“If the world is becoming a void, the artist must fill it with his soul.”

The Aphorisms of Henry Adams

The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.

The Detached and Other Poems

However hard I trudge and search I cannot find the hills I have climbed.

The Editor’s Relations with the Young Contributor

The danger with a young contributor is that he may be his own rival.

The Joy of Writing and Other Poems

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the page, are letters up to no good.

The Lesson of the Master

Kids interfere with perfection. Wives interfere. Marriage interferes.

The Making of a Writer

The Practice

I lost myself in their minds: for the moment I actually became them.

The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man

These adventures taught me that writers are flawed human beings.

Thomas Nelson Community College

After several months, I worked up the courage to share a war poem.

Three Poems

From a pyre on the burning ghat a corpse slowly sits up in the flames.

Ticket to Ride

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.

Tom Jenks on Editing The Garden of Eden

Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden was edited by Tom Jenks.

Tradition and the Individual Talent

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.

True Believers

Buster’s reasons for looking after Marco weren’t entirely altruistic.

Two Poems

My brother could Wichita wheelbarrow like I never could.

Vivid Scenes and Good Prose

What Makes a Good Story Great

Lori & Garry Marshall

When Enough Is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse

What about writers who come suddenly into full power late in life?

When Enough Is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse

What about writers who come suddenly into full power late in life?

Writing

Literary gatherings are a nightmare because writers have no shop talk.

Yet and Other Poems

No more laughing like the waves. No more ocean of words to drink from.