[Dreaming inside the pages of Braided Creek by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser.]

Some authors write in such a way that even with four lines of a poem, I’m taken to vividly see and experience some place I had not planned on going. This small book is one four-liner after another and for me, a constant passport punching from farm life to listening to an aging man express a somber freedom he’s starting to realize as he’s finally let go of the allures of notoriety.

I want to write like these guys do. I want to learn to tell stories like they do, that with four short lines, the person in front of me is imagining a new place, a new experience, or revisiting and old one. The advise I’ve heard: keep at it and put yourself in front of a lot of good stories. Add those two to living a good story and you’ve got a good mix.