Laton Carter is the author of Leaving, winner of the 2007 Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Laton lives in Eugene, and is teaching this term at Portland State University. Here’s how he describes a good writing day:
“A good day of writing for me almost always entails little or no talking. So much of a poem for me is not reaching for an image, but rather ear-training, or the training of the ear to listen for and hear the cadences of speech, those tapping consonants and pearled vowels which don’t produce musical pitches, but instead musical, or rhythmic, patterns. When I look at a work in progress, and it seems to rely less on description and more on how a thing operates, then I can let myself feel it’s been a good day.”
