In our poem of the week, Gina Valdés offers this vivid description of her experiences on the roads of California with some good Samaritans who stop in their “smooth-running carcacha” to get her “not-so-smooth-running carcacha” going again. This poem is from the just released Winter Issue of Third Wednesday. That’s not Gina’s car in the photo but it looks like the car I see in her poem.
But I have promises to keep,Coming soon to coffee mugs and t-shirts everywhere – the copyright on Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening expired at midnight on January 1st, 2019. The poem was written over twenty inspired minutes in the summer of 1922 after Frost had been up all night working on a different poem that wasn’t going well.
Our Winter issue includes poems from our Second Ever One Sentence Poetry Contest, including this one, one of three winning poems chosen by our editors from among the nearly three hundred poems that were entered. We’re already looking forward to our Third Ever One Sentence Poetry Contest, beginning in Mid-February.
Jack Kerouac reads from On the Road with background music from Steve Allen on the Steve Allen Show in 1959.
By immersing students in the joy and power of poetry and literary self-expression, InsideOut inspires them to think broadly, create bravely and share their voices with the wider world. Guided by professional writers and celebrated by publications and performances, youth learn that their stories and ideas matter and that their pens can launch off the page into extraordinary lives.
Each Quarter Third Wednesday is proud to provide a platform for Inside/Out and the youthful poets of Detroit. Visit I/O soon by clicking on their logo above, read about their mission and consider an opportunity to show your support.
Third Wednesday’s annual poetry contest is accepting entries until February 15th, 2019. Here is a winning poem from 2017 from Washington poet, Cheryl Clough. Judge Larry Levy said: “Seeking Center seems to me one of the most deserving winners in this year’s entries. It demonstrates a strong command of language, economy of expression, and sense of direction. It begins well, builds with an interesting theme in mind, and develops and sustains that theme in surprising and arresting ways.
Entering our twelfth year of publication…
Poems by:
…and many others
Our Poem of the Week was first published in fall 2018 issue of Third Wednesday. Here is Ted Kooser’s poem, Fairgounds.
Michael Mark, a frequent contributor to Third Wednesday, is featured in today’s column in American Life in Poetry. Here’s a link to his poem “Estelle” .
Congratulations Michael!
Cover art by Jude Dippold 
Ted Kooser (13th Poet Laureate of the United States)
“Ohio Blue Tip”
Marge Piercy (Arthur C. Clarke Award Winning Author) 
“An Argument of Crows”
&
“I Observe the Climate Changing and I Complain”
Jack Ridl (2013 INDIES Award Winning Poet)
“Sitting on the Back Deck of Our Houseboat
in Key West a Few Days After Jim Harrison Died”
&
“It’s What He Does Instead”
Phillip Sterling (Author: In Which Brief Stories are Told, 
Wayne State University Press, 2011)
“Recognition”
Third Wednesday Magazine 