A Special Sharpener Announcement

Quick survey and an offer of a free consultation

Hi Readers,

The Sharpener is a community of poets and people who are interested in poetry. It’s about sharpening our thinking through poetry—reading better, writing better, and living better.

I’m looking for ways to improve the newsletter, and I’d like to get to know my audience a little more.

I hope you’ll please fill-out this short survey about your experience with The Sharpener. It’s just five questions, and shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes.

As a way of saying thank you (for sharing your opinion, for being a part of this community) I’d like to make you an offer.

When I’m not writing this newsletter, I make a living editing people’s manuscripts. I’m offering Sharpener readers a free 30-minute consultation to talk about anything poetry-related.

Here’s how we might use our time together:

• Suggestions for what to read

• How to get unstuck; how to keep pushing forward

• Generating new poems

• Making deeper, stronger use of metaphor

• Linking memory or lived experience with specific language

• How to better bring out your best intention for your poems

• Waking up all the connections between the deeper subject and feelings

• How to build capacity for psychological stamina after inspiration

• Skills of deepening oneself in the writing

• Developmental editing—how to move from idea, to poem, to multiple poems, to manuscript

I look forward to reading your thoughts and to speaking with you.

Sean