Featuring the writing of Buzz Anderson
I recently submitted a poem to the Morton Marcus Poetry Contest…I did not win the poetry contest—however, I did get an email from the sponsor, Catamaran Literary Reader, informing me that they were “releasing” my poem back to me. (I hadn’t realized they were holding my work captive, but I felt a strange sense of comfort upon its return, like getting your coat back from the hat-check counter on a dark and stormy night!)…
Literature is full of classic novels portraying strong female characters. Titles like Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, and My Ántonia, to name just a few, have graced old and new bookshelves for many years. History, as depicted in both fiction and nonfiction, has been shaped in large part by women—women with strong voices, convictions, and fortitude who have influenced every part of human existence. This demonstration continues today and no doubt will continue in the future. Check out contemporary novels like The Covenant of Water, Songbirds, and The Secret Life of Sunflowers if you’d like to read about extraordinary female protagonists.…
A while back, I built a Little Free Lending Library. You know the kind: a boxy receptacle with shelves, a pitched roof, and small swinging glass door housing used books on various subjects.…
They prayed to their protectors, ancestors, and the natural forces that impacted them every day, such as the sun, moon, and weather gods.
About three blocks down the coast from my house sits Villa Maria Del Mar, a stately three-story wooden hotel first built in the 1890s to accommodate mostly Catholic vacationers…
This, in a roundabout way, brings me to a local issue regarding the renaming of Cabrillo College
Have you visited the Scotts Valley Library lately?…
You can write anything you want and be assured very few people will actually read it.…
While writing and rewriting some poems recently, I realized I never wrote a poem about the Ohlone people that inhabit my novel. In so many ways, I want to pay tribute to them and yet not speak for them. It’s not for me to define their worldview, I can only attempt to pass on a few things that I’ve learned in studying their culture, of which so little is actually known. The following is a modest attempt to capture a small part of their consciousness. Perhaps it also speaks to some current thoughts in our lives today.…
A while back, I compiled some of my poetry and had Community Printers in Santa Cruz print up two hundred copies, which I distributed to family and friends. I did three readings and maybe sold a half dozen books. All in all, a great experience. I have continued to write poems, but not at a great pace since most of my literary time has been spent on my novel. I recall writing and gifting one particular poem to a friend on her birthday. She made the comment that my poems are “accessible.”…