Sticky

Dave Malone's new workshop: "Writing & Crafting Excellent Poems"

Hello, Poetry Friend

Here’s the thing about Dave Malone’s poems: They’re sticky. You read one and think, “That’s a good one!” and then it sticks around, like a grass burr you can’t shake. And then you read the poem again and think, “Wait, that’s really good.” And then you’re texting with a friend about the Bangles and you remember Dave’s line about miracles and you read the poem again and know this one will stick with you.

I met Dave through a mutal friend, and last fall I taught a workshop using his collection Tornado Drill. We were a group of beginning poets, published poets, and even an award-winning poet. We shared a love of words and concise, evocative writing. Dave joined us for a Zoom, and he was both instructive and generous.

He told us he saves all his drafts of a poem in one document, adding the newest version to the top. So as he scrolls down, he can see the evolution of the poem — how it started, what stayed, what dropped, what changed. After our Zoom, Dave generously shared the document for one of the poems in his new collection, Bypass. Here’s the final, published version.

After I Disappointed a Friend

More grizzly now than man,
he rumbles in the deep forest.
Pines thick at his shoulders,
even the breeze fears to move
through such tight spaces.

In the evening light,
on all fours, he thrashes
against spring's undergrowth,
and his furry head waves white
like river foram.

He won't venture to the water
where I linger, just a lone fisherman.
But I call out to him while
the season's salmon dart away
from every single streamer I toss.

-Dave Malone

This fall Dave is teaching an online workshop, Writing and Crafting Excellent Poems with the goal of publication. The workshop meets for four weeks online, from October 1-29, in a 75-minutes weekly Zoom format. The cost is $350 or $300 for literary patrons. Poets will enjoy both personal instruction and like-minded community.

His text for the class is Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual, a book I cannot recommend highly enough. Kooser is a former U.S. Poet Laureate, and his poems are masterful but sound like you’re just visiting with your Nebraska neighbor over coffee.

The chance to learn from Dave about how and where to submit poems for publication is, I think, one of the special offerings of his class. When Callie Feyen and Tresta Payne and I put together our Let It Fly, booklet, we did so because we wanted help and support investing in ourselves as writers. Because even after being published, we still wonder if we have ever written anything anyone would want to read.

If you’re like me, you have a lot of poems sitting lonely in notebooks or in digital files. Some are pretty good. Some stick with you, like they have potential. A few, with a little attention, might become excellent.

Happy poeming!

Megan