Prodigal Poet: An Ecclectic Offering on God, Shakespeare, and the Beatles

I'm a curly head. It's a little bit scary just how much of my identity, through the course of my life, has revolved around having curly hair.  Not only do I associate so much of myself with curly tresses, but others do as well.  It makes me easily identifiable in a crowd, especially since I also color my hair a fairly bright red hue.  I've never been what you would call, a conventional person.  I've never had what you would call, a conventional look.  I'm not that eccentric by any means . . . I'm not goth; I'm not a bombshell; I'm not overtly and hip-ly modern.  I'm just not the average girl.  I look as if there's a real possibility that I was born in the wrong era -- that I would sit more comfortably in the Renaissance or the Medieval periods.  I have what many would term as the "classic" look: small, petite features, fair skin, plenty of meat on my bones, and . . . of course, the curly hair. When I was gr...

There are days when I love writing so much that I just can't seem to get words out quickly enough to satisfy the inundated crevices of my soul. And there are probably far too many days when I hate it -- I hate the way it feels, sounds, tastes . . . I hate the way it taunts me and chastizes me for not being more clever and witty. Writing is really a love/hate relationship. You don't do it simply because you love it. You do it because you feel you have to -- that you will cease to be you if you don't. I've talked plenty about how I discovered that writing was my life-calling when I was 9 years old, writing my first book of poems for the Young Authors Contest. I had never felt such satisfaction before as when I first put pen to paper for that very first poem, titled "Mothers." I will probably never aptly articulate just what that moment meant for me and what it did to me. I was hooked. I was lost and gone forever in a world full of words,...