2nd & 4th Wednesday, 11 – 12:30
This program is for anyone who enjoys poetry. There will be opportunities to read, recite and write. Best Words, Best Order is the title of a collection of essays by the poet Stephen Dobyns which in just those four well chosen words perfectly describes what a poet aspires to when putting a poem together. Writing poetry is spills and thrills for the beginner and expert too. There are countless small pitfalls but sometimes in the writing something happens, an ah ha moment where the poet feels he/she can say or almost say precisely what’s needs to be said. Think about how a joke works, it’s a little like that.

Exploring Poetry will be led by Mark Kraushaar who’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Yale Review, Alaska Review as well as the web site Poetry Daily and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. A full length collection,“Falling Brick Kills Local Man” was published by University of Wisconsin Press, as winner of the 2009 Felix Pollak Prize. His most recent collection, “The Uncertainty Principle” published by Waywiser Press, was chosen by James Fenton as winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize. He has worked as a pipe welder, wig salesman, shoe factory line worker, waiter, motel clerk and, most recently as an RN.