Author: Sally Ashton
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From the Ether, Spring 2023
On the Power of Poetry A Sunday morning guilty pleasure: to retrieve my home-delivered copy of the Sunday New York Times from the driveway, listen for a minute to the early morning bird chatter before I head inside, hit the coffee maker, pour a bowl of cereal, and plop down at the kitchen table to…
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Going to the Moon…
Thanks to editor Joyce Brinkman, my poem “4.6 Billion Years” will be headed to the Moon in 2024 in The Polaris Trilogy anthology as part of the Lunar Codex project! And yes, I’m both starry-eyed and over the Moon! Yes, THAT Moon….
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DMQ Review Fall 2022 Craft Essay Issue
On the craft essay Don’t tell me the moon is shining . . . In a letter to his brother, Franz Kafka passed along some memorable writing advice, later paraphrased in an apocryphal quote, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of moonlight on broken glass.” Don’t tell me . .…
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A Chat with Dion O’Reilly
Here’s the Buzz from The Hive, a lively interview featured on KSQD Radio with me and Dion O’Reilly. There we first talk about a poem that’s influenced me recently, “The City Limits” by A. R. Ammons from his Selected Poems, reprinted below from poets.org. In the interview, I refer to the poem as “The Radiance,”…
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2021
Hi there! Please check out my Pages, About, Calendar, Books, etc., right up there in the header for more info, and thanks for checking in. Too many other projects bubbling at the moment including at DMQ Review, but I appreciate your interest and support. And I hope all is well with you and yours. In…
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Week Three: Tighten Up!
It’s not time to loosen up on those distancing restrictions for the foreseeable. You can do it, now! Now do it right! Watch out baby. Don’t you get toooo tight! Here’s a much better sound recording, and, well, some different steps. Try both! Everybody. Tighten up. Stay home. Sock it to ’em.
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Day Twelve: Weekend
Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash “I can’t wait for the weekend.” That’s become the running joke at our house as we pad around in our socks looking for the next thing to do, or the next thing that we feel like doing since there are always tasks waiting around the house and yard…
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Day Eleven: Looking
When things are looking down, look up. It’s true. The physical act of moving the gaze upward lifts the spirit. While brain research and psychological studies offer support for this claim, just take a minute to prove or dispel it yourself with some research of your own. Chin up, forehead back, and I’m staring at…
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Day Ten: Listening
What are you listening to? I’m not talking about what you can hear at the moment, though if I pause the light tapping of my fingers on the keyboard for a moment, I can hear a number of things: a far-off mower, Frank opening the back door, a plane’s distant rumble, the furnace–which was not…
A Muse Bouche 