17 Comments
User's avatar
LindaAnn LoSchiavo's avatar

"It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there" - - - - - - William Carlos Williams. #quote

"The Faculty at Ghost Academy"

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Elite instructors here will guide your path

To greatness. We’ve hired Faulkner, Hemingway.

Our playwrights will get your work on Broadway.

Do you aspire to be another Plath?

We’ll introduce you; Sylvia’s on staff.

Let ghosts who’ve made their name in letters sway

Your publishers with marked advanced acclaim.

Compare our rates to others. Do the math.

The afterlife was boring. Now they’re here

At Ghost Academy, where you’ll succeed

In writing ten bestsellers — or Macbeth,

Collaborating with the real Shakespeare.

With spirited assistance guaranteed,

Your books will earn a living after death.

- - - -

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue902/ghost_academy.html

Expand full comment
Dianne Moritz's avatar

If only....I loved your poem.

Expand full comment
LindaAnn LoSchiavo's avatar

Thank you. And this might very well occur . . . . "Your books will earn a living after death." :-)

Expand full comment
Ron Wetherington's avatar

Well done in the best of the senses! The best writing evokes rather than describes. I can taste it all!

Expand full comment
Mary E Birnbaum's avatar

Tom, if you can really cook like that, I'll come over for Thanksgiving and never miss the turkey. And I think your poem nailed the truth and beauty thing. I think I'll lock the door and write a poem now. About what, I don't know--doesn't even matter. Holding that nice sharp pencil, welcoming the Word, that's the joy.

Expand full comment
Beth Glaspie's avatar

LOVE this! It left me joyful and hungry for more. :)

Expand full comment
Elizabeth McCulloch's avatar

Preface to a guided writing session: though I am a novelist rather than a poet, it made me laugh over and over.

Expand full comment
Emily Tee's avatar

[edit: the following qoted remarks are my friends and family's responses to my own poetry. The intention was to show solidarity with the author and the polite yet insincere feedback on their cookery, such a clever analogy.]

"Is it even a poem?"

"Why doen't it rhyme"

"I don't get it"

"I don't get poetry"

"Not poetry!"

I think your friends and family must be a lot more long suffering and socially polite than mine :)

[edit - as exemplified by the comments I recieved above. ]

Very enjoyable article.

Expand full comment
LindaAnn LoSchiavo's avatar

#ICYMI "The Faculty at Ghost Academy" is a Petrarchan sonnet - - so, of course, it rhymes and is tethered to lines composed in iambic pentameter. . . . . . . "Free Verse" does not rhyme because CRAFT and METER, so dear to the heart of formalists, are part of a discipline must be learned and practiced daily.

Expand full comment
Emily Tee's avatar

Hi LindaAnn,

The remarks I left are not my thoughts - I should have said they are my friends and family's views on any poem I have attempted to share with them. I will edit my remark.

Of course I understand the difference between form/ formal poems and free verse. I almost always write the latter, and in quite a prose style, hence the 'is it poetry?' comment I often get.

Expand full comment
LindaAnn LoSchiavo's avatar

Yes, I know, Emily. I was aware you were repeating what other people often say. No one on this forum would say, "I don't get poetry" - most certainly NOT you! :-)

Expand full comment
Victoria Nordgren's avatar

Definitely convert that three season porch! I am already delighted to be sitting there!

Expand full comment
Loralee Clark's avatar

Lovely! Thank you.

Expand full comment
Dianne Moritz's avatar

Wow, just beautiful. Thank you for these words filled with truth and wonder and joy.

Expand full comment
Michelle A. Gil's avatar

I love everything about this - also, I want recipes. 😉 A great reminder to.just create what's on your heart. 💙💚🦋

Expand full comment
Wayne Paul Mattingly's avatar

Thank you. Rolled on into that joy of humor for me.

Expand full comment
bibothebubo's avatar

huh?

Expand full comment