Achievements, Publications, and Writing Challenges
It’s the “Almost Halloween” Friday Round-Up!
Happy Friday, friends! I hope you've had a wonderful week. I know in the last couple weeks I've been a bit off my game as far as posting regularly. I've had good reasons---family stuff, birthdays, travel, illness---but that doesn't mean I feel good about not writing...
Birthday Weekend Round-Up!
Hi friends! Happy Friday! I hope you've had a wonderful week! It's been almost two weeks since my last post. Last week was quite the week, and I did very little writing. This week has been all about catching up and getting back in the rhythm, so again, very little...
A Birthday Saddle & A Friday Round-Up!
Happy Friday, friends! I hope you've had a wonderful week! Compared to last week, this week has absolutely flown by. Cadence turned 5 on Thursday (I still can't believe it---FIVE?!), and earlier this week, we took her out for a family birthday dinner at Texas...
New Poem “In Nature” & The Prompt Behind It
IN NATURE My daughter calls the outdoors home & needs no reason to enter. Her skin, the brush. Her voice & birdsong. Her running speed & the air through the field. They are the same. Sometimes, she blends in so well, I cannot see her. The brownest strands...
Tuesday Motivation: Is This Your Year to Write Your First Book?
Happy Tuesday, friends---and Happy October 1st! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and a great start to your week. We're officially in my favorite month of the year. Fall is in full swing, both of my kids are having birthdays, and there is also Halloween! Seriously,...
A Very Long Week, Poetry Games, & A Friday Night Round-Up!
Happy Friday night, friends! This one is coming in LATE, but hopefully some of you night owls are out there reading with me (getting LIT-erary on Friday night, right?). It's been a long week, and I'm exhausted. You might call this the perfect opportunity to talk about...
“A Sleeping Octopus Changes Color While Dreaming” & The Prompt Behind It
"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."---Hamlet A SLEEPING OCTOPUS CHANGES COLOR WHILE DREAMING I can see it up there, high in the corner like a spider hosting its web. This is how my...
![“The Hunt for Red [Starbucks]” & A Friday Round-Up](https://mckenzielynntozan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/AE6DD674-023B-4876-950B-1EE42016F9CA.jpeg)
“The Hunt for Red [Starbucks]” & A Friday Round-Up
Happy Friday, friends! I hope you've had a wonderful week and have amazing plans for your weekend. Me, I don't have particular plans, but my friends do! On Saturday, one of my friends is celebrating their birthday (shoutout: Happy Birthday, Jenn!), and one of my other...
Literary Scene
My Dumb Heart
---To my fellow Benders, I threw on my grief. MY DUMB HEART is open wide and overflows with water. How I manage to stay alive is beyond me. I like to...
Dear Emily—
---Hope is the thing with feathers. Here is a truth: I thrive on hope. But yet, here is another: if you fill a pillow with feathers, I cannot sleep--- I wake in the middle of the night, heavy-chested and warm, throwing off the dark as if it were a spare...
National Poetry Month Goals!!
Hi everyone! I hope everyone was able to get out and enjoy the first day of spring a little bit yesterday. It was about 40 degrees here, with beautifully crisp air. We wound up barbecuing out with some friends, so it was a great time. It gave me a chance to...
Black & White Poetry Jam This Weekend!
Hi everyone! I have a great event to share with you! This Saturday, right before the Bowl, is the Black and White Poetry Jam at the Potawatomi Greenhouse Conservatory, right across the street from Indiana University South Bend, backed up against Kids' Kingdom. ...
Poetic Donations! #poeticdonations
Hi, all! The holidays are upon us, and for many of us, so is the winter chill (with or without the snow yet), and I have an idea just in time for the holidays that could be beneficial to everyone! Contact me, either over on Facebook or at mcklynntozan (at)...
Tracey Knapp Reading at IU South Bend Tomorrow!
Hi everyone! Just in case you haven't heard, poet Tracey Knapp will be reading at IU South Bend tomorrow night at 7:30pm on the Bridge on the third floor of Weikamp Hall. She will be reading from her first full-length collection, Mouth, published by 42 Miles...
Remembering Herbert Scott
SLEEPING WOMAN ---after the painting by Richard Diebenkorn I’m walking east down Lovell in Kalamazoo in the middle of the afternoon, and it’s hot, July something, and there’s a man...
Tomorrow!! At the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts!!
Everyone! Wonderful news: I have plans for you for your Friday night! As a part of the Greater Kalamazoo Art Hop, the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts will be hosting a reading for their art exhibit, Second Sight/Insight II, which is in its second year of...
Newsletter
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Reading and Poem of The Day
Poem of the Day: Rebecca Pelky
Happy Wednesday, friends! Here’s today’s Poem of the Day: “Radium Girl” by Rebecca Pelky. Enjoy!
Poem of the Day & Remembering Ralph Angel
Happy Tuesday. In memory of Ralph Angel tonight, here are several of his poems from his collection, YOUR MOON, from New Issues Poetry and Prose. Enjoy.
The Coronavirus & A Poem of the Day: Jennifer Jackson Berry
Happy Monday, friends! In an effort to share a little beauty during these difficult times, I’m bringing back my Poem of the Day series. Today: Jennifer Jackson Berry’s “I Lost Our Baby.” Enjoy.
Reading Louise Glück: 4 Days until Halloween
“And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling”
– from Louise Glück’s “All Hallows.”
Enjoy! We have four more days until Halloween!
Reading Rae Armantrout: 5 Days until Halloween
“Haunted, they say, believing
the soft, shifty
dunes are made up
of…” – from “Djinn” by Rae Armantrout. Enjoy! We have 5 more days until Halloween!
A Night of Building a Manuscript & Reading Poetry
Here’s a quick snapshot of my Labor Day weekend! The Good Place, IT, reading poetry, and compiling my poetry manuscript!
Poem of the Day: Meg Day
Happy National Poetry Month! Here’s the Poem of the Day, for the first of the month: Meg Day’s “Hymn to a Landlocked God.” Enjoy!
Poem of the Day: James Wright
Happy Friday! Today’s poem of the day is “A Blessing” by James Wright. Enjoy!
Reviews
The Waking, Danger & Consent of the Body & Love: Reading Lisa Mangini’s Bird Watching at the End of the World
When we spend a lot of time reading poetry, I know we can become critical of the pursuit of love and the defining of boundaries in poetry---but sometimes, a poet chooses to address these exact topics, and they get everything right: they create something new,...
Clark Kent is a Super Hipster: The Art of Finding Beauty in the Absurd & the Mundane: Reading Shawnte Orion’s The Existentialist Cookbook
Here I am, attempting to think of what to say, but my coffee spilled, and it made such a lovely and dark display across my table. This is the sort of mindset in which Shawnte Orion places me: an area of in-the-moment appreciation, the odd humor of something...
Journeying Through the Fear Tactic That Is the Subtle & the Severe: Reading Sarah Rose Nordgren’s Best Bones
Before I get started, I have a (positive!) confession to make: I wrote this review four times. I read a lot of poetry, but it’s rare to discover a collection that is unique in its severity, one that equally makes you cringe and keeps you reading with mutual...
Commitment & The Portrayal of a Wife: Reading Rebecca St. James & Nancy Rue’s One Last Thing
I will not lie to you, from one reader to another, this was a difficult book and topic to trudge through. It follows the last few weeks of one couple’s engagement, in which the main character, Tara, discovers her fiancé, Seth, is addicted to pornography and has...
Stages of Fear & Domestication: Reading Laura Madeline Wiseman’s Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience
Click here to see my review of American Galactic. You’ve heard the stories---two children lost out in the woods, little girl in a red-hooded cloak, three little pigs---we all have. And, admittedly, I have “red” many poetry collections (whether or not...
Costume or Skin, A Reckoning: Reading Laura Madeline Wiseman’s American Galatic
Click here to see my review of Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience. We’ve all been there---wondered about life, the afterlife, and whether there could be life on other planets. These are interesting questions, because, to the common wonderer...
The Pursuit of Truth in Image & Idea: Reading Frederick Pollack’s A Poverty of Words
I don’t know about you, but I always find myself looking for new---either ‘new’ or ‘new-to-me’---writers who might teach me something new about how I read and how I approach writing. I also try to make it a regular habit to reach out to writers whose aesthetic...
Grief as Celebration & Grief as Beauty: Reading Michalle Gould’s Resurrection Party
We all have such differing definitions and expectations of grief. When asked to define grief, love, beauty, we often begin to play a game of word association, or we resort to metaphors and personification. Pain and sorrow. My heart hurts. It’s like a well that...
Writing, Publishing, and Marketing Tips
Writing My Summer Away: In the Early Days after My MFA
Hello, everyone! Needless to say, it’s been a while---sorry for the radio silence. As some of you know, I graduated this May with my MFA in Poetry from Western Michigan, and my life since then hasn’t quite been what you would have expected. As my younger self,...
My Attempt at a Definition Poem while Reading Allan Peterson
This is why I love reading: it opens so many doors. While reading Allan Peterson's Precarious (published by 42 Miles Press, 2014), I began to consider less-than-common terms, synonyms that are so interesting and unique that we often do not use---for instance,...
Insight from a Dreamscape
“One day when I was really pushing through, writing every last word, it occurred to me there is nothing more wholesome than having great knowledge in literature. You are pure, and insightful, and brave in ways you never imagined when you are intelligent in...
Jericho Brown: A Poem
Like hail from a blind sky, the body falls. He drinks wine from broken shot glasses and wears a goatee. This is his appearance to some. For others, he continues on his way in bare feet and white robes. In either world, he takes his time. Whether or not his...