30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #14: Kay Ryan on Reading

Every Saturday, during National Poetry Month, I'll be looking at the writing habit of a "famous" poet. (I put famous in quotes because fame is relative. Naomi Shihab Nye has a great poem on the subject.)

Last weekend, we visited with William Wordsworth and his dog of discerning poetic tastes. Today, let's discuss former U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan.

kidsbritannica.com

I have posted about Ryan once before. I was lucky enough to hear her read at the 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival. Ryan had a straightforward, person-to-person way of presenting her work that the audience loved. Despite all of her accolades, there is nothing grandiose in Ryan's style.

So I was not surprised, when I was reading up on Ryan's poetic habits, that she extols the virtues of  1) setting aside regular time for writing and 2) reading. Not just the classics, but anything. Everything. As in Ripley's Believe It or Not. (That reminds me, I need to break out my copy of Weird Maryland. There must be some poems waiting to be found in its pages.)

Here is a portion of an article, "Poet Laureate Chats with Community College Students":

"The second habit is to read a lot, according to Ryan. 'Read anything, read the entire spectrum,' she said.

"Ryan is a big fan of 'Ripley’s Believe It or Not.' She likes to read graphic novels. She even likes to read the labels on shampoo bottles and other products. She also finds it useful to read things that are 'irritating.' 'It’s important to read outside your taste. I like to read things that are foreign to my life, when people are in terrible straits or lost at sea,' she said.

“'I like to think of my brain as a fish tank and the fish are ideas,' Ryan explained. 'In order for the fish to be well, the water has to be aerated. Reading plunges oxygenated language to the tank in my brain, receiving new patterns, new thoughts, refreshing my mind in general.'”

The full article on Ryan's writing habits is at the Library of Congress website.

Here is an animation of Ryan's poem "Shark's Teeth."

Today is Baltimore's CityLit Festival at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. I will be there ALL day. Stop by the Little Patuxent Review table to say hello, if you're in Charm City. The festival is free. Featured readers are poets Edward Hirsch and Thomas Lux, among others. Wow!

Also today, my writer's notebook is visiting Amy at The Poem Farm. Watch one of my poems evolve from scrawled note to published piece.

Tomorrow, Leslie Resnick speaks to us from the voice of the poem.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #13: Robyn Hood Black on Haiku Mind

Happy Poetry Friday! Before you start getting all woo-woo superstitious about Friday the 13th, it is always a lucky day at our house. My son's birthday is 2/13, which occasionally falls on a Friday. We enjoy laughing at all the self-imposed-black-cloud people out there, and then we eat a cupcake.

Poet, children's author and Poetry Friday blogger Robyn Hood Black of Read, Write, Howl is here today. She calls her writing habit "haiku mind." I love the idea of practicing haiku form as a way to clear out mental cobwebs (and self-imposed black clouds).

Here is Robyn: Thank you for having me, Laura!

Let’s see –  At 4:15 a.m., I check on the organic pecan halves soaking for my green tea…. Not really.

After the house empties of other humans in the morning, I do like to settle down and read with some coffee and my old hound dog before heading into my office to write. 

The best habit I’ve developed over the last couple of years is really a new approach to writing – and daily life – by becoming a student of haiku.  I came in through a side gate as a children’s author, discovering an online magazine Gisele LeBlanc had at the time featuring haiku for kids – and also stumbling into Diane Mayr’s multiple hats as a published haiku/ haiga poet, children’s author, and librarian (does that woman sleep?!). Gisele’s Berry Blue Haiku is now a blog/journal featuring haiku for a general audience,  and I’m delighted to be her assistant editor.

Traditionally, a haiku is a short poem, often three lines in English, capturing a moment – juxtaposing two images in nature and leaving room for the reader to participate.  (Haiku does not lend itself to being precisely defined, so there are exceptions and differences of opinion all around!) I love poring through poems written hundreds of years ago as well as those in current journals.

I’ve always been a fan of small things – recalling the ending of WilliamWordsworth’s “Intimations Ode”:

“To me the meanest flower that blows can give/Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

If I’m relaxed and in a “haiku mind,” I do notice more – the sound of a bird’s chirp or the shape of its shadow, and then I’ll consider whether that experience connects to some human experience I’m dancing through that day.  Trying to craft a poem from such observation requires an economy of language (and often several revisions) that improves my writing in general.  And probably my thinking. 

Haiku can be profound and yet so deceptively simple – like fine children’s books, which is why I love both.

Two of my favorite books of haiku for children. (LS)

Submitting haiku has been a microcosm of the publishing process, too. After months of reading and writing, I submitted to two top journals, not knowing if my poems were good enough to be published.  They weren’t – I received swift, polite rejections.  Then I spent about a year reading more and more and more, and writing more of course.  When I sent out submissions last fall, I was delighted to receive acceptances. (This year I got into those two journals which I received rejections from before, too.)

Here are a few poems:

same blue

as ten years ago

empty sky

Notes from the Gean, December 2011

cold front –

an urgent wind

at my back

Modern Haiku, Winter/Spring 2012

cicada song

Spanish moss

dipped in sunlight

The Heron’s Nest, March 2012

My haiku was in A Hundred Gourds and will soon appear in Acorn, Chrysanthemum, and Prune Juice.  I’m new on the journey with much to learn, but I appreciate each step.

This week's Poetry Friday host is Anastasia Suen. Thanks for gathering us all together today, Anastasia.

Tomorrow is Saturday -- "famous" poet day. We'll check out Kay Ryan's advice on reading as a habit for writers.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #12: Dennis Kirschbaum on Writer's Block

I met Maryland-based poet Dennis Kirschbaum when we worked together on an anthology, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire, which features Maryland poets.

As I have gotten to know Dennis and his work, my respect for his poetry  has increased. I feel a little guilty that I'm comforted by Dennis' post on "bad" writing habits. I find it soothing that a poet whose work I admire shares my struggles with procrastination (Hello, Spider Solitaire!) and writer's block.

Dennis at the 2011 Baltimore CityLit Festival.
This year's festival is Saturday, April 14.

Here is Dennis: My Bad Habits

I have writing habits. They are all bad ones.

I surf the web.

I get up and get a snack.

You know we are out of almost EVERYTHING, maybe I’ll pop over to Mom’s Organic and pick up some fruit and coffee. Who can work without coffee?

Back from the store, I put on a pot of coffee. No point in getting started until it’s ready.

I look at a few items I am following on eBay.

I have a obsession with manual typewriters, though I don’t write on one. Oh, I tried. I did a lot stalking on eBay and finally obtained, at a staggeringly low price of forty dollars, a Remington Quiet-Riter (circa 1957) identical to the one my mother bought when she was in college. By the time I knew that I needed to learn to type, my mom already had an electric typewriter. But I found all that humming and the violence of the powered carriage return a little scary, so I taught myself on the Remington manual, still looking good, though a little musty in the hall closet. I spent the summer between my first and second year of college, practicing.

The old green banger.

qqqqwwwweeeerrrrttttyyyy. What an inane layout for keyboard!

Some years later, when she was selling our family home my mother got rid of the Remington along with the Coleman lantern, my Flexible Flyer sled, and a bunch of other really great stuff that I am now reacquiring from other people’s mothers on eBay at mostly bargain prices. Really? No one but me wants to bid on this?

When the new (old) Remington arrives, I find out why it was so cheap. It is caked with dust and grime and the keys stick. More Internet research. Kensington Office Machines in Kensington, MD is the kind of hole in the wall place you pray could still exist. It does. Manual and electric typewriters from every decade in the 20^th century in various stages of disrepair line the walls and halls along with old printers, computers with tape drives, and mechanical calculators that add by means of rows of numbers and a hand crank. I drop off the Remington for a little R&R. These things take time, of course. Six months later, Vladimir, also known as The Guy Who Works on These, has made the old green banger as good as new.

After about 5 minutes at the machine, I remember why I switched from a typewriter to the word processor on my college’s mainframe computer the day someone showed me how to use it.  Mistakes fixed effortlessly. Drafts. Revisions. I had forgotten that I can’t spell! I bought my first Mac the year they came out and today write on a MacBook Pro. It’s a beautiful thing.  It’s perhaps the one thing that stops me from going back to live in Paris in the 1920s where I could procrastinate by sitting in cafes, drinking cheap red wine, and smoking cigarettes. (I would have been a fantastic smoker, if I had been born back when they didn’t give you cancer and horrible breath.)

Imagine Dennis in a fez.

Still, the manual looks beautiful and smells like a new bicycle. Isn’t that what Steve Jobs called typewriters? A bicycle for the mind? Someday, when I have the photo taken for my book jacket, I’ll pose in front of the manual. For now, it looks great sitting on my desk with a new piece of cotton bond rolled under the platen.

I need a deadline to bring me to life. Nothing focuses the mind like an axe hanging from a bit of rope over one’s head. It’s why I participate in a poetry writer’s workshop. We meet weekly and the thought of having to appear before my friends and critics empty handed is a humiliation that I can’t bear. “Why Dennis, you weren’t able to write anything?” I imagine my teacher saying with incredulity. The deadline is more valuable to me than the actual feedback I get during the workshop itself. I always show up with something. Here’s what happens.

The morning of the workshop, I roll out of bed and press the button on the coffee machine. I sit on the sofa with the laptop on my lap and something comes. It always does. I never have writer’s block under deadline. The words gush like a broken water main on a cold winter day until I have something like a big block of ice. Then I start chipping away at it as if I am trying to make a sculpture. I take out every word that doesn’t seem essential and move around the line breaks. I get into a kind of zone where the rest of the world disappears. The normal distractions vanish. Oh God, I’ll be late for work!

There, I leave the document open in the background all day. I look at it from time to time. Sometimes I delete a word. Add a comma. I think, “This is total crap. Why didn’t I start working on this days ago.” But it would be even more humiliating to go to the workshop with nothing than with this piece of garbage. I remind myself that the point of a workshop is to get criticism not to show off perfect work and swallow the teaspoon of pride I have left and print a final draft.

Here’s a poem about trying to write.

Writers Block

By Dennis Kirschbaum

It's not always easy to tell the difference between thinking

and looking out of the window. — Wallace Stevens

Hell may have no fury like a scorned woman’s rage,

but an author knows no horror like the blankness of a page,

whose very whiteness mocks him, when lines stare back unfilled

while coffee in his cup grows cold and ink dries on his quill.

His mind’s a wasteland barren (think of Eliot’s famous poem)

while the forge of creation lies as chilly as a tomb.

He pleads with Sarasvati to fill his pen with words,

seeks sparks among the ashes. Those prayers go unheard.

Perhaps a walk around the block is the thing to turn the tide.

With such a gorgeous sky, it makes no sense to stay inside,

anything, he thinks, to forget this awful day

he’s feared so long and now is here --there’s nothing left to say.

It is then she comes unbidden at the store or in the car.

An idea forms; a germ takes root. “I should have thought of that

   before!”

Words boil like water, the sanguine humors flow,

a diamond bullet through the brain, a sapling starts to grow

into something like Frost’s wood (though not as lovely, dark, or

    deep)

and takes shape within his mind, “I have one more left in me!”

Until the next time he faces inspiration’s yawning void,

confirming yet again the knowledge of his fraud.

Small ones dread the darkness, delivery men, the clock,

but a poet’s lowest hour precedes the sound of Muse’ sweet knock. 

The Muses, by LeSeur at artilim.com

Dennis M. Kirschbaum is a writer and poet living in Washington Grove, MD.  He grew up in Baltimore, and earned a B.A. in English from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC and an M.A. in Jewish Philosophy from Baltimore Hebrew University. His poetry has appeared in Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems and has been featured on WYPR Baltimore’s The Signal. He is a member of the Maryland Writers’ Association and an Adirondack Forty-Sixer.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #11: Jacqueline Jules on Finding Writing Time

Butt in chair: it's an old writers' adage for a reason. Setting aside regular writing time is the surest way of making progress. However, if you have kids or pets or friends that need your attention, a house to clean or a job that pays the bills, doctors appointments or family in town, writing can end up on the bottom of the to-do list.

Here is children's author Jacqueline Jules, an active member of our local, MidAtlantic SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators) chapter. Jacqueline advises taking your writing time whenever and wherever you can get it.

THE BEST TIME TO WRITE
by Jacqueline Jules

    At my last dental appointment, my dental hygienist treated me like a rock star, asking all kinds of questions about what it was like to be a children’s author and poet.
    “Do you have a specific time of day when you are the most creative?” she asked as she picked tartar from my teeth.
    Since I couldn’t close my mouth to answer while she was cleaning my molars, I had a few moments to think about my answer and consider how she framed her question.
    “I’ve read that some writers do their best work in the middle of the night. Others work first thing in the morning. . .”
    My best time of day to write? In the last decade, my struggle has only been to find the time to write.  I write whenever there is a free moment. Sometimes that means a few stolen moments to look over a poem draft while I’m eating breakfast before a day of teaching. Other times, that means taking a notebook with me on a walk. I’m an avid walker and often think about a poem while my feet are moving on my neighborhood sidewalks. Hey, some people listen to music while they exercise. I like to listen to words trying to make music in my head.
    When I can’t fall asleep at night, I think about metaphors to match an emotion I’m struggling to convey in a poem. I re-write lines while driving, doing the dishes, cooking, dressing. Scribbled notebooks weigh down my pocketbook and litter my house.  
    I don’t know whether or not my dental hygienist was disappointed to learn that my writing habits were not particularly glamorous. But they are what they are. Sometimes, I worry about myself. I think I spend too much time obsessing over words and not enough time interacting with people. My method of confronting this concern, of course, was to write a poem about it. The following poem, “Upon Visiting the National Museum of African Art,” appeared in The Amistad – Ars Poetica, 2008.

A mask of the Ejagham peoples, from the National Museum of African Art.

Upon Visiting the National Museum of African Art
by Jacqueline Jules

In this quiet space
filled with small glass houses,
visitors like me, walk with open mouths
amid iron masks and ivory figures
crafted by hands that also hunted for food.
Shelter, clothing, and a full belly—
it's never been enough—
not even for Cro-Magnon
who painted cave walls
and made bracelets from bone.
Humans like to make things,
just as a dog likes to dig, clawing the dirt
without knowing why.
I've often questioned my mind
when it becomes a migrating bird,
unable to turn back,
as a poem searches wildly
for a warm spot to build a nest.
I worry that I spend too much time,
puzzling over words on paper
while others dine and party.
Now I see my connection
to those who carved roosters
and decorated horns
after hunting in the bush
or toiling in the fields.
A poem, a pot, or a painting—
each starts with the same impulse
to birth an image from within
and watch it stand on its own,
blinking in the light.

Jacqueline Jules is a poet, teacher, librarian, and children’s author. Her award-winning books for young readers include Zapato Power, Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation, and Duck for Turkey Day.

Her poetry has appeared in over 70 journals including Nebo, Inkwell, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Broome Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Christian Science Monitor, Chaminade Literary Review, Imitation Fruit, and Potomac Review. She won the Arlington Arts Moving Words Contest in 1999 and 2007, Best Original Poetry from the Catholic Press Association in 2008, and the SCBWI Magazine Merit Poetry Award in 2009. Visit her online at  www.jacquelinejules.com

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #10: Melanie Hope Greenberg on Inspiration + Drive

I met children's author and illustrator Melanie Hope Greenberg several years ago at a local writing conference. Though we have stayed in touch through Facebook, I've never told Melanie this: at that writing conference, I wrote down something she said. The quote has been posted above my desk for years.

I love the idea that reading is an escape hatch for children. It was true for me. But books can also be a ladder out of rough circumstances for some. A City Is was the first book of poetry for urban kids I'd come across.

Melanie calls her own writing habit "Inspiration Meets Drive to Manifest." With her permission, I am sharing an excerpt from Melanie's post about the long journey it took to publish A City Is.  You can find the full post on Melanie's blog.

Pablo Picasso said, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." Inspiration is just an initial thought. As we saw yesterday with Lisa Vihos, it takes the drive of regular creative practice, of working, to manifest results from initial inspiration. In some ways, Melanie was in the right place at the right time to become a successful children's author/illustrator. But she was in the right place because of her drive and desire to create books for children.

Here is Melanie: I feel so fortunate to have met and worked with so many talented people along my life's path. Brooklyn Poet Laureate Norman Rosten was one of these wonderful people.

I was just breaking into children's books in 1987 and Cousin Arthur's was the local children's bookstore in Brooklyn Heights. The owners, Bob and Barbara Tramonte, were poets. In 1987, the idea for the Children's Book Illustrators Group (CBIG- New York City) was born at this bookstore. I became its first President.

Local author, playwright and poet, Norman Rosten, was a frequent visitor to Cousin Arthur's. Norman and I became friends during the time I designed a book of his poems, 'Songs for Patricia'. The Tramonte’s poetry press reissued it in 1988. When my second children’s book, MY FATHER'S LUNCHEONETTE, was released in 1991, Norman asked if I would read some of his children’s poems for possible publication. Being new in children's books that offer was incredibly generous and encouraging.

A CITY IS had many detours on its journey to publication. It was rejected a few times before Norman passed away in 1995. It finally sold to Henry Holt, one of his original publishers. His poem are simple and timeless. Memories of Norman always stay with me. 

Your Tuesday Prompt:

Melanie Hope Greenberg said, "We have a responsibility to teach children that they have an escape hatch in their minds." Your response can go in a few directions:

1. write about an early reading experience -- the moment you sensed that escape hatch opening,
2. an open meditation on the phrase "escape hatch in their minds" -- this can be realistic, surreal, whatever bubbles up for you.

Melanie Hope Greenberg has illustrated 16 trade published children’s picture books; six of them she wrote. Greenberg was recently an artist in residence for the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art's National Endowment for the Arts grant titled "Picture This! Bridging Arts and Literacy". Her original picture book illustrations were part of the "Drawn in Brooklyn" group exhibition curated by John Bemelmans Marciano at Brooklyn Central Library-Grand Army Plaza. Greenberg was also the selected artist for the Texas Library Association conference's Disaster Relief Fund raffle. 

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #9: Lisa Vihos on Practicing

I "met" poet Lisa Vihos through 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a global poetry initiative begun by Michael Rothenberg. You can read my interview with Michael here.

A 2011 100 TPC poster.

Lisa was enthusiastic about sharing her story -- how a long period of regular writing practice eventually paid off for her -- because it's so encouraging. If you believe in Malcolm Gladwell's theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice before one achieves mastery in a skill or art form, Lisa's writing habit makes sense.

The 10,000 hours theory appears in Gladwell's book Outliers.

I "tested" the 10,000 hour theory on my own writing life. Although I don't have an official log of hours spent writing, I guess-timated how much time I spent writing each year, from the time I finished graduate school to the time my first book came out. It's right around Gladwell's mark.

Here is Lisa: Prepare and Set Aside

For many years, I danced around my poetry, trying various literary avenues: children’s book writing, art writing, short story writing, journaling. Nothing blossomed and whenever I met a published writer, I broke out in an envious sweat. I was troubled.

Then, something like a small miracle occurred. After participation in a workshop with poet Philip Dacey at the 2007 Great Lakes Writers Festival at Lakeland College, I felt as though a faucet had opened up in my head. Poems started to pour out. I knew I needed a goal to sustain the flow. In January 2008, I determined to write a poem every week and email it to a small circle of family and friends. I did not expect commentary, just eyes and minds to engage in the work. One friend asked, “do you really think you can write a new poem every week?” I had no idea. But, I had to try.

Eventually, my distribution list grew to over 200 people. I never missed a deadline in three years and three months of Sundays. Not every poem was stellar, but most of the poems were pretty good, and certain people always let me know when something touched, tickled, or confused them. One of my readers is a widely published poet who eventually suggested that I cut back my frequency in order to better hone my craft. I liked this idea, and in March 2011, I started to send a poem only on the first of the month. I think about potential poems all month long, but I often don’t start writing until just before my deadline. I’ve always worked best under pressure.

In her April 1st blog post, Laura shared a recipe for an inspiring green tea shake that involved organic pecans being prepared the night before and then set aside. Likewise, a poem (or even a whole lifetime of poetry?) benefits from being left to marinate. But don’t put it on hold forever. Return with fresh eyes as soon as you can and write more. If I learned anything in my three-year apprenticeship, it was to develop a practice of mind and to think as a poet. To collect details, connections, snippets; to steep them, savor them, and eventually turn them into poems.

My favorite Poem of the Week comment came from a neighbor who said, “Thank you for your dedication. You have inspired me to revisit my songwriting.” A comment like that makes my heart sing. That is what poetry is for, in my opinion: to move and inspire, to point out that which would otherwise go unnoticed. On that note, I’d like to share the poem with which Poem of the Week began on a winter day in 2008.

Advice from the Snow

by Lisa Vihos

When you fall, fall as I do

soft as feathers or a baby’s sleep.

With a light hand, spread an ocean of diamonds.

Make no sound as you blanket the earth.

Reflect light back upon the looker

orange and pink at morning, deep mauve at dusk.

Simply by your presence, round out flat places

and outline beauty that otherwise goes unnoticed.

And when I call you, do not be afraid to lie down

to bring forth an angel; an image of you in me.

How successful has Lisa been since her three year weekly-poem project? "Advice from the Snow" was published in the 2011 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets poetry calendar. Lisa’s poems have also appeared in Big Muddy, Goose River Anthology, Lakefire, Red Cedar, Seems, Verse Wisconsin, and Wisconsin People and Ideas. She has one Pushcart Prize nomination and one chapbook, A Brief History of Mail (Pebblebrook Press, 2011). Her second chapbook, The Accidental Present is due from Finishing Line Press in June of this year.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Stop by each Tuesday during National Poetry Month for a prompt related to writing habits.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #8: Nicole Schultheis on Food

My friend Nicole Schultheis is a poet, a lawyer, a mom, a novelist and president of a fabulous organization, the Maryland Writers Association.

Nicole is also a die-hard foodie. Once, when I was visiting her home, I had to ask about Nicole's wall-length bookshelf. It is filled from top to bottom with cookbooks, collected by Nicole and her late husband.

I wonder if Nicole knows about book spine poetry.
With these book titles, she could cook up some pretty juicy verse.

If you comment today, please share your favorite writing-time munchies. For me, it's Twizzlers. (Another option -- write a book spine poem with Nicole's cookbooks.)

My jaw muscles love them. My taste buds are in heaven.

While I don't indulge often, Twizzlers are the perfect amount of chewy. Did you know that chewing helps you think? Here is an article on the topic from Real World Mindfulness.

Recently, Nicole tried something a little fancier than Twizzlers for her writing snack. The gourmet salsa was a treat for the tongue, but had some unexpected side effects.

Several bathroom breaks later, Nicole returned to her computer and found this piece, composed by her dog. It's a (rejected) new food review for McSweeney's.

Dear McSweeney’s,

My mistress is annoyed.

Last evening when no one was looking and she was trying unsuccessfully to write something funny, she ate a whole tub of Fresh! Hot Salsa with a crowd-pleaser bag of salty chips, then devoured a large chocolate bar with hazelnuts. (She did not give me any of it.) This made her drink a lot of water. She couldn’t sleep, I suppose because of the chocolate and the water, so she got up, went to the bathroom, took ibuprofen and acetaminophen together, and drank another large quantity of water. Then she slept until 10:30 and woke up groggy, downed four cups of black coffee, and sat here at this screen staring, apparently unable to write the piece she had intended to submit to you literate types at McSweeney’s. She kept pressing on her belly with her arms folded. She went into the bathroom several times, fiddling with something or other. Around two, she got dressed but found she could not force her feet into any of her favorite shoes, so she settled for her new pink and green flip-flops that had lots of pretty buttons and silk flowers sewn on them. I liked them especially because the bottoms were hand painted with little paisleys and polka dots. When she came back, this screen had gone black and in the reflection, she saw something that bothered her in the middle of her cheek and began picking at it. She moaned, and went back to the kitchen to make more coffee.

I wiggled the mouse with my nose and saw the word Fresh! on the screen in an email addressed to McSweeney’s but there was nothing written after it.

The new flip-flops were under her chair. My gums were itching.

Sincerely,

Fidelio

You can purchase these lovely floral flip-flops for $125 at Zappos.com

As Nicole says, flip-flops, while delectable, are not technically a food. They did, however, inspire some fun writing.

Tomorrow, Pushcart-prize nominee Lisa Vihos stops by to talk about the importance of practice.