Upcoming Workshop: Portrait of an Image: Image as A Driving Force of Poetry

Beginning June 8, I will be offering a 10 week workshop on imagery:. Portrait of an Image: Image as a Driving Force of Poetry. Through readings, lectures, discussions and guided exercises, participants will explore the history of imagery in poetry beginning with the Imagists of the early 20th century and learn how to create crisp, effective images to enhance your poems. In addition to weekly reading assignments, participants will write a poem each week. Participants’ poems will be critiqued privately by me as well as by the other participants in the class. Poems will also be workshopped.

Here are the workshop details:

  • Length: 10 weeks
  • Session Length: 2 hours
  • Cost: $500 Now $400
  • Limit: 10 students
  • Time and date: TBA (most likely Sundays 10-12)
  • Dates: June 8 – August 10
  • Classes will be held online

For more information or to register, email mikemaggio@mikemaggio.net

I look forward to your participation.

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Individual Poetry Workshops Now Available

I am now offering online poetry workshops for individual poets who wish to explore ways to develop their poetic skills.. Each weekly workshop will focus on providing detailed feedback on individual poems as well as on providing advice on publishing, breaking through writer’s block and presentation skills.

Each weekly workshop will include:

  • One hour weekly class to discuss elements of prosody.
  • Participants will submit a weekly poem, either what s/he is working on or by assignment.
  • Detailed discussion about the poems submitted for evaluation and critique.
  • Detailed written comments about the poems submitted for evaluation and critique.
  • Assigned readings as needed.
  • All workshops will be conducted live online.
  • The first session is free to evaluate the poet’s expectations and needs.
  • Cost: $50 per session.
  • Time: TBA

Here is some background information for those who don’t know me:

Mike Maggio’s publication credits include fiction, poetry, travel and reviews in many local, national and international publications including Northern Virginia Review, Apalachee Quarterly, Pleiades, The L.A. Weekly, The Washington CityPaper, and The Washington Independent Review of Books. His full-length publications include a novel, The Wizard and the White House (Little Feather Books, 2014), a novella, The Appointment (Vine Leaves Press, 2017), and a collection of short stories, Letters from Inside (Vine Leaves Press, 2019). His latest collection of poetry, Let’s Call It Paradise, was released by San Francisco Bay Press in 2022 and won the International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry in 2024. His latest publications include a novella entitled Woman in the Abbey (Vine Leaves Press) and a collection of poetry, A Brief Gazelle: Poems of Love and Grief (San Francisco Bay Press).

He has taught at the University of Southern California, Northern Virginia Community College as well as at various locations overseas.  

For more information or to schedule an initial free consultation, contact me at poem@mikemaggio.net

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Tonight: Music for Peace

To raise money for World Central Kitchen to help feed the people in Gaza, Karim Maggio, Master’s degree candidate in Cello at Julliard, and Yasmine Gerardi, Bachelor’s degree candidate in Voice at Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), have organized a concert called Music for Peace to be held live at CIM and to be streamed live online. The concert will feature works by Israeli, Moroccan, Palestinian, and Persian composers.

Maggio and Gerardi are collecting money online as well as in-person at the event, and they are also holding an online silent auction, featuring items from local Cleveland vendors and artists. Please consider making a contribution or bidding on an item. To do so, visit the donation and auction portal using the following link: linktr.ee/musicforpeaceCIM. The goal is to reach $5,000.

For more information about the event, the livestream (for those who are not local), and to donate or bid on an item, please visit https://linktr.ee/musicforpeaceCIM or scan the QR code in the photo above.

And please share this with your friends and family.The program begins at 6:55 PM EST today, May 4, and can be viewed for free by clicking on the link below:

Thank you for your support, and happy viewing.

Mike

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Announcing the Winner of This Year’s 30 for 30

Joan Dobbie, this year’s judge for 30 for 30’s “Let’s Not Talk About Cancer” and co-host of the River Road Reading Series in Eugene, Oregon, has chosen “Das Quintett” by Suzann Heron as this year’s winning poem. In making her decision, Dobbie writes:

The other poems come from the cancer experience as a thing that happens to older people, middle aged and beyond, like me and you. And this of course is true. But this one lets us know (or rather, since we already do know, but actually feel) two important things: one, that children do not live trivial lives. And, two, that children also are vulnerable to cancer.

Das Quintett

The tiny musicians are poised
Ready to play the piece
Each has spent much of
Their days, months, lives, practicing
Rehearsing, a homage

They are equally spaced, all five,
on a sturdy, wooden, plank,
teetering on the tip of a jagged rock
Jutting, out of the sea
The sky is a grey

The bow of a small sail boat
Can be seen to approach,
carrying the cancer
You would not suspect it
While the music plays

Each note carefully crafted
Like a scalpel
cuts through the cool sea breeze
To the wooden boat
Carrying the cancer

Copyright 2025 Suzann Heron

As this year’s winner, Suzann will receive a one-year subscription to Potomac Review..

Congratulations Suzann!

And thank you to all of this year’s participants for sharing your wonderful, creative work.

Until next year…

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

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A Brief Gazelle

After a year and a half of production issues, my latest poetry collection, A Brief Gazelle, has finally made its way into the world.

A Brief Gazelle is a collection of poems written over several decades that deal with love and heartbreak: the heartbreak that occurs when love loses its elusive luster. With cover art by local artist Antonella Manganelli, A Brief Gazelle examines all aspects of this most potent of human emotions with a strong use of language and imagery.

Here is what’s being said about the book:

Because he writes about what we value, Mike Maggio restores consciousness to language. His unswerving commitment to clarity makes poetry relevant as well as harmonic. Lyricism would mean nothing without the fine art of meaning; and, over time, other writers may wind down, but Mike Maggio will continue speaking with beauty, strength, and wisdom. In our poetry world, Maggio will surprise new readers who find him for the first time; and he will reassure old readers who are his fans.

Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate Emeritus

In A Brief Gazelle, Mike Maggio explores the complexities of love–the joy and grief, the ephemeral and eternal, the real and surreal. Maggio masterfully integrates cinematic sensations of image and seasonal landscapes–inhabited by birds and celestial beings, flowers and trees, lakes and seas, and lovers who appear and disappear like gazelles–with a soundtrack of love songs. We hear the voices of lover and beloved expressing joy and pain, love that’s lost and found, grief that never leaves, and readers identify as both the speaker of the poem and the reader.

— Cathy Hailey, Cathy Hailey, Author of I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth and Vice-President, Poetry Society of Virginia

To purchase a signed copy of A Brief Gazelle, click on the following link:

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Or you can purchase a copy directly from San Francisco Bay Press or from your favorite online bookstore.

Stay tuned for upcoming readings and events.

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Ingrid Bruck 

Green Cathedral

My mother in home hospice phones crying
but let's not talk about the breast cancer.
Her tears for a tree are nothing new.
Now she's 97 but she was doing this in 1962
when she read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
It's the next door neighbors, she complains.
They cut down my green cathedral.
That old tree deserved to live.
They blame it for roof rot,
they say moss got into the shingles.
But that tree was here before their house.
The tree was alive before Mildred built the house.
The majestic tree was alive before she was born.
It's older than me
and could have outlived us all.
That old tree's so huge, a crew of three men
took all day to bring it down.
I'll never lay in bed again gazing into its branches.
I've loved that old oak most of my life
and don't want to be here when they decide
to cut down the other big grand tree.

Copyright 2025 Ingrid Bruck

Bio:

Ingrid Bruck lives and writes in Pennsylvania Amish country. A retired library director, she writes haiku short forms, grows wildflowers and makes jam. Four Pushcart nominations, two for Best of the Net. Current work appears in Failed Haiku, Spillwords and  Poetry Hall. Poetry website: www.ingridbruck.com

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

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Valerie Beers

What No One Talks About

Everyone
talks about
how
cancer sucks,
awareness,
championing the cure.
Pink ribbons
&
bravery.
No one
talks about
how
she started smoking
at age 12
getting the cigarettes
from the
school bus driver.
Tongue cancer.
Red ribbon
for the
blood and addiction.

Copyright 2025 Valerie Beers

Bio:

Valeri Beers is from Bangor, Maine. She has published 2 books of poetry.  … details… which is out of print and Scratching The Surface which has new poems and all the poems from  … details…  Scratching The Surface is available on Amazon.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

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Sally Toner

To preserve formatting, this poem has been saved as a PDF. Please click on the link below to access it.

For Emily Whenever We May Find Her

Bio:

Sally Toner (she/her) is a Pushcart nominee whose poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in Northern Virginia Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, Watershed Review, and other publications. Her chapbook Anansi and Friends was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. She received an MFA in narrative nonfiction from the University of Georgia. An empty nester with two grown daughters, she lives in Reston, Virginia with her husband. You can find her at sallytoner.com, salliemander70 on Instagram, and on X at @SallyToner

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review









Donation Appeal:To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

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Marianne Szlyk

The Red-Eared Sliders at Morningside Park

You tell me that these turtles who swim here,
throng this green pond and give us joy, were pets.

One by one by one, people set them free,
for school was over and childhood was done.

Turtles seem happy with ponds to swim in,
fish and weeds to eat, warm rocks to bask on.

Or do they throng the shore, look for the one
who gave them names, gave them food, gave them love?

All in vain. They dwell in this pond, all ponds
in New York City, make them stale, murky.

They’ve driven out the wild ones. Large snappers
who hide beneath rocks, who flinch at noises

humans make once we see turtles swim past.
Sliders don’t mind loud voices, lights at night.

They know us. They know us all too well.
It's why they can live with us, give us joy.

Copyright 2025 by Marianne Szlyk

Bio:

Marianne Szlyk and her husband sometimes go up to NYC for part of their summer vacation. Her most recent book of poetry is Why We Never Visited the Elms (available on Amazon and from the author), and she is also publishing fiction these days, mostly in Mad Swirl, Piker’s Press, and Impspired.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

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Bernardo (Andre Taylor)

Let’s Not Talk About Cancer

Don’t answer that phone
If the disease comes calling
Beyond irritating it is
Debilitating
Appalling
Let’s Not Talk About Cancer
Like it is the all and all
Like it has unchallenged balance purpose deemed supreme
Like it could walk a tight rope and not fall
Let’s Not Talk About Cancer
Like it’s a real conversation
Something wanted, yearned for, desired
Aspiring to be sought out it in the deepest meditation
Worthwhile the price of lifelong savings
Its pain protrudes past pleasure profusely
All the goodness of our cravings
Let’s Not Talk About Cancer
The cost of what we’ve lost in people, love, and time
How who they were, or growing to be
Distortedly defined
Let’s Not Talk About Cancer
Anymore
Let’s just have an answer
A cure

Copyright 2025 Andre Taylor

Bio:

Brenardo the ‘singsong’ poet is known for poems of power and insight. A veteran of the United States Navy, and of stage, radio, and television, his presentations are far reaching. His poems have appeared in print in magazines and anthologies throughout the world.

Brenardos’  latest book, “Bridges Over Aggravated Troubles”, is available by reaching him @ deotp123@gmail to order your signed copy.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

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