Edie Roones

Wrapping up a 26 blog posts about poetry during 2017, Writers Ink Services is presenting Pure Verse for Christmas. Yes, we take a look at two classic Christmas poems, including "The Night Before Christmas", as well as two that should be classics. And three video clips of classic Christmas songs and movies. Join us!

Pure Verse:  Seduced by Rhythm and Rhyme Over at Writers Ink Services, we're concluding a yearlong examination of poetry craft.  We've looked at "Clocks" and "Counting Stars", "Both Sides Now" and "Tapestry", "First Fig" and "Wildflowers".  We've looked at major poets and songsters who deserve the title "major poet".  And we glanced at Occasional Poems. Christmas is the greatest occasion during the year, and poets of all sorts can't resist writing their own version of a Christmas poem. Herewith are the dangers of Pure Verse that so many wannabies and newbies and hacks fall into while the true poets manage to avoid those pitfalls. We finish up this blog with Sara Teasdale (true poet!) and her "Christmas Carol".  You'll like it, I know.  You may even want to make it one of your Christmas traditions. Flip it ::  click here to read  this blog. Only one more blog for the year...

Another new cover for M.A. Lee:  this time for A Game of Hearts . Purchase here!

Blank Verse:   Old Masters and New Remember, we’re examining the poems using MMO:  Means, Methods, Opportunity (Aristotle’s Kairos ).  This time we won’t have three different forms to analyze.  Blank Verse only has one form. On tap we have the Old Masters, Shakespeare and Cowper, and the New Masters, Frost and Stevens. Flip to the link below to read the blog: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/11/25/ poetry-major-met…-blank-verse-mmo /

A new book by my friend Remi Black, the second in her Enclave series. Dream a Deadly Dream Assassination.  A fugitive comtesse.  A lethal sleep-spell.  Wyre and wraiths.  Wizardry against sorcery.  And regicide. In Dream a Deadly Dream , a sorcerous plot to kill the king weaves together past and present, dream and reality, to create a nightmare that can kill. For three years Cherai, the comtesse Muirée, has hidden from the conspirators who assassinated her father.  Now, in the weeping season, a sorcerer has woven a lethal sleep-snare to entrap her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she holds the key to the conspirators’ chance to seize the throne of Vaermonde, a chance thwarted when they killed her father too quickly.  The poisoned nightmares sent by the sorcerer will compel Cherai to turn herself over to her father’s murderers. Only a chance-met wizard can free her from the sorcerous sleep-spell. The exiled wizard Alstera wander...

Blank Verse Poets who want to appear “intellectual” (cue the snobbish accent) will use Blank Verse. See, I’m already limiting my readers who are turning off because I’m using the jargon of educational poetry. “**” Okay, first, let me talk about “professors” and “educators” of higher content learning.  (I am using “**” here so you will know I am being sarcastic about these terms.  These people aren’t teachers.  Sorry, back to my point.) These people run the Advanced Placement level courses in high school and many of the higher level college & university courses (for several years, as an adjunct professor, I had to bow to their strictures).  Some of these “people”—not all of them—act as if the knowledge they have is arcane, open to only the privileged few.  They want to keep their content secret.  They present the information in dribs and drabs wrapped around by multiple distractors, so that only a special few will understand it. Grrr.  T...

Try this:  click! New covers mean looking at how people can find books. M.A. Lee surveys a major e-retailer's listings for her books and list some Indie Writer difficulties.