charlie hensler

I often think of this poem.

photo of a trail in the woods. a leaning alder. sun through the trees.

sun out in november thus a walk in the woods

I have a new poem in @havehashad.com that answers the burning question of "what is the opposite of an 'eating poems' poem"

"it's all coming up now,
milkweed and mango..."

www.havehashad.com/hadposts/hei...

The Lampshade At the gates of heaven they said let's review: six snails eaten, but no burning buildings entered to save a child, a puppy, a mother's music box. You splashed into a dozen rivers, but many more you saw and never touched, never thought to touch. And yet, you spent most of your life working on this one species of looking. You'd see a wooden door and make a face from its knots and whorls. You'd find a dead cardinal and would wonder if the dead forget the color red first. Mostly we were impressed with this hat you made one night out of a lampshade. Your toddler laughed so hard he nearly lost his voice. After finishing his bedtime, you turned to go, and he told you to stay. We liked how he pulled an imaginary string dangling out of your nose. How you shut your eyes afterwards and lay perfectly motionless beside him. For years your son believed light is something you become. It's waiting, there, under your skin.

NEW POEM ALERT! got a couple new ones in the latest issue of @lamplitmag.bsky.social. Here's the lamp-iest one :)

The Poetry Society was delighted to host Diane Seuss on Monday 10th November for the latest in the prestigious Kenneth Allott / Poetry Society Annual Lecture series

The lecture is now available to view on the Poetry Society's Vimeo channel at vimeo.com/1135802263 or see link in bio

another good poem gone bad by morning 🙄

I don't know if people know this but good poems are hard to write

late fall foliage in the pacific northwest

late fall foliage in the pacific northwest

late fall foliage in the pacific northwest

late fall foliage in the pacific northwest

last of fall around here

photograph of a line of smaller maples, across a green park lawn, under a partly cloudy fall sky

a fall walk in the park

"I am my first and oldest system" 🙏

Studio & Craft Studio & Craft is a poetry community offering generative sessions, workshops, and manuscript consultations.

The Shore contributor Catherine Pierce is now offering online poetry workshops! 🌊🌊🌊

Check it out here: www.studioandcraft.com

Passing | Victoria Chang Someone said, at first we want romance, then for life to be bearable, at last, understandable. I am frightened, now that the trees look like question marks, how the moon makes strange noises but it’s daytime. Bells have begun to notice me.

Victoria Chang -

In Christ There Is No East or West by Michael Metivier — Antiphony: a journal & small press

Thrilled to have my poem “In Christ There Is No East or West” in the new issue of @antiphonyjournal.bsky.social Huge thanks to editor/founder Ann Pedone not only for accepting the work but for wise, wise edits. For optimum reading due to long lines, turn your phone landscape-wise, or read on laptop.

Ghost In the late, tilted hours I can find you sitting in a derelict sedan hood in the blackberries, last sun slanting through the dusty glass. I did not choose my absences you will tell me—the days became a parade of ghosts, one introducing the next— one made of tattered newspaper, another colored shapes gliding behind beaded glass. Such presence—you can’t imagine you will say, folding back into your blue silence, lighting a cigarette though you never smoked.

a spooky ghost poem I forgot I had written -

Rest in peace, Ellen Bryant Voigt. You were a force of nature and one of the sharpest people I've ever known. You will be greatly missed.

The Music Lover The adagio was the shadowed street deep in the neighborhood, unnamed, a window open on the green afternoon. No one walked there. No one came. When she did, she stepped into a wind, a lush crescendo and looked, looked back again— disappeared in the sudden arms of violins.

A little ode for a dear one.

Amsterdam Review Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW! Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more.

Our Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW!

Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more.

Read here: bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #fiction #translations #finearts #amsterdam 🇳🇱

Matins | Louise Glück You want to know how I spend my time? I walk the front lawn, pretending to be weeding. You ought to know I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact I’m looking for courage, for some evidence my life will change, though it takes forever, checking each clump for the symbolic leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already the leaves turning, always the sick trees going first, the dying turning brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform their curfew of music. You want to see my hands? As empty now as at the first note. Or was the point always to continue without a sign?

Louise Glück, on fall.

"Or was the point always
to continue without a sign?"

Our newest issue is out now!! Find it online here: northamericanreview.org/magazine

I think it’s good to be influenced - I love discovering a poem or writer that teaches me something. but trying to “write like” them - 🙄. I mean if another poet’s horse wanders into your poem it’ll probably have something else to say?

I do feel that certain admired writers take my "voice" hostage for a period of time, but when I escape I steal the cutlery.

Fireplace scene from The Big Lebowski. Mr. Lebowski sits dejected before the fire, questioning his life in light of the kidnapping of his wife, while The Dude smokes a jay, all to Mozart's Requiem.

my narrator

the unspoken gem of writing a bad poem is knowing it's a bad poem, what a relief, what a gift, what a treasure to know this effort didn't get there and, because you failed to build a bridge the right amount of far, you are that much more aware of where "there" is

Close up of a vibrant red dahlia bloom.

a late dahlia

rereading this thread, and pondering this: "where the language clearly breaks away from the poet and the poem establishes its separateness".

"A question to consider during edits, when eyeing a phrase or word: Do I want to stain this word or strain it? Why?"

“This is how poems happen for me. Bits and pieces, glimpses and strokes, hints and imagistic nudges, and at some almost-accidental moment it all flies together--not to make sense but to induce a feeling. I call these gifts.”

-- Yusef Komunyakaa

you may enjoy boat ramps

gigantic HAD energy

In general, my go-to editing tips/thoughts:

1. Read the piece out loud, preferably loudly. Where your tongue trips is where it's awkward for readers too.

2. Familiar language is bad and is often the result of a familiar tone dragging the piece toward said language. Be different!