Writers on Writing​
Poetry

Shears and Machetes
a​ prose poem
by Denize Springer
Writing poetry is like using pruning shears to cut my way out of a jungle in which I am ensnared by childish conceits and deadly cliché. Tangled tendrils of tense and tone hang in my way. I slip on the slick mud of mixed metaphor, and trip over the roots of my raw ambition, to fall headlong into matted debris of dried-up ideas and watered-down insight. In truth, I’ll need a machete to hack through the garbled growth, and crush its remains under my boots. Only then can I proceed with confident gait to that good place where I can use my shears to snip lightly at the leaves of logic and let in just enough light to cultivate a tiny jungle flower that astonishes.
About Denize Springer
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​Denize Springer’s plays have been presented in distinguished New York and San Francisco venues including the New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre and The Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her nonfiction and fiction have appeared in various publications and literary journals including the Marin IJ, East Bay Express, Pearl, Estero and Ocean Realm. She earned an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and has taught two courses for OLLI at SF State (Make a Scene – Summer 2014, Find Your Genre – Fall 2013).
Other works by Denize in this issue:
​Echoes in Stone (Fiction)
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​The Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual arts by members of OLLI at SF State.
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​The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ provides material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.