Author: Claudia Putnam
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I’m reading poetry (and maybe a bit of fiction) his weekend! (10/25)
POETRY READING: It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do a public reading. So glad I was invited to be the featured reader at this wonderful open mic tradition! Marmo Gallery, in Shelton, WA, is a cornerstone of the artistic community in this region. Worth checking out for its own sake. And the…
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Standout Reads 2016
Late again… But you were probably needing some books to read this summer. In case you’re bored, here’s the best of what I read last year: Fiction The Sport of Kings, CE Morgan. Ha. After the exquisite gem of Morgan’s first novel, what did her readers expect? It’s always difficult to come out with the…
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Anger Happens
“The taboos against expressing our anger are so powerful…. When a woman shows her anger, she is likely to be dismissed as irrational or worse. At a professional conference I attended recently, a young doctor presented a paper about battered women. She shared many new and exciting ideas and conveyed a deep and personal involvement…
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Upvalley and Downvalley
Where I live now, on Colorado’s Western Slope, towns are strung out along the confluence of two rivers, the Roaring Fork and the Colorado. Those who live “upvalley” live southward along the Roaring Fork, and generally speaking, the richer they are or the richer they want to be, the closer they live to Aspen. Those…
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Advice from a Master
Some years ago I took a master class with the poet Marvin Bell. I’d been galvanized by an interview I read in American Poetry Review. The interview (not linked) was accompanied by a selection of Bell’s Resurrected Dead Man poems. I was only starting to take myself seriously as a poet—i.e., to give myself permission…
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Burning Down the Room
I just came back from visiting my son, now 21. As I think about my next steps in the world—I’ve moved into my third rental space in less than two years—it seems like a good time to post this draft of a blog post I found in my files recently. I’m not sure why it…
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Thinning Down the House
I’m moving on again. I’ve had to do this a few times in the past couple of years. Like a lot of people, we’re finding that the jobs we want or can get are not necessarily where we were living, or where we wanted to live. (Yay for the efficiencies of capitalism, as people take…
Claudia Putnam: Writer: Poetry & Prose 