Sunday, April 22, 2012

Red Balloon Rising Goes Viral!

My little poem, "Red Balloon Rising," has gone viral! Originally published in Pleiades 31.1, it was recently picked up by David Lose on his blog, In the Meantime, and then again distributed by Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry project to newspapers across the country. It has been picked up (so far) by the Enunclaw Courier Herald in Enumclaw, Washington, the Covington and Maple Valley Reporter in Tucker, Georgia, the Bonney Lake-Sumner Courier Herald,in Sumner,Washington and the Edgefield Advertiser in Edgefield,South Carolina. This has never happened to me before. What a wonderful thing, to have a little poem like this achieve such a life of its own. And kudos to Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry that makes poems available to newspapers every Monday. Poems used to be a regular feature of small and big town newspapers all over the nation. It's nice to see them there again.