The leaves have opened completely outside my window, and my neighbor’s honeysuckle bush expands over my deck, a little more each year, though he leans over his deck and apologizes and trims it. The first summer we lived here I think I saw a hummingbird come drink from one of the small white flowers, and…
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The headlines are apocalyptic: the subways flooding, the wind on fire, the heat, the drought. And also: this week I got a pedicure, kissed my son’s cheeks which he tolerates, sat by the pool with my mother and sister ate so much ice cream. I walked IN the river and got up the nerve to…
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At the beginning of the year, we started a podcast called United Against Silence, which is an opportunity for to hear from (and gush over) the artists who facilitate for CBAW, and learn about their processes, rituals, and approaches to creativity. The name of the podcast came from the name we gave the collective of brilliant and accomplished artists who facilitate our workshops. In “Notes on Truth-Telling,” an essay that closes my first book, I wrote about the value of refusing silence, and how systems of abuse (even the systems of abuse we maintain inside ourselves) thrive on silence. I was thinking then of violent silences.
It has been a long time dream/aspiration/goal of mine to perform at the Dodge Poetry Festival, To rub elbows with cool poets I love, to be in that catalog of (it seemed to me, all these years), who’s who. This year, I was accepted to present, and the festival launches today. I’ve recorded some parts, and will be live in some other parts over the next ten days. I am bummed to not share space with all those poets, to not rub literal elbows. But as I looked at the incredible, incredible, incredible list of poets, a knot formed in my stomach. Why was I included? I literally spent an entire hour scouring the Dodge site for information on what special program I might have been accepted under. Then I was so embarrassed by my lack of play-it-cool that I swore I’d never tell anyone. An hour later I told my whole writing group. And today I’m telling you.
What has been built in these six months was impossible for us to imagine then, and the magnitude of it is so difficult to articulate. Each week, unlikely groups of veterans, service members, healthcare workers, first time, and experienced writers gather on zoom from all over the world to create a sort of time-space. It is the epitome of reintegration, of overcoming isolation, of connecting across difference.
The poem I wanted to write is crouched in the dark under the table, it crawled out of its skin and curled its fist around a pen. Yes, the poem I wanted to write wants to write a poem of its own. I moved a sofa into my study so I can lie down and cry between line breaks. And now you are worried, want to know if I’m okay. No, I am not. But neither are you.
Last week a friend I met through teaching sent me a short essay about her time on an inpatient psychiatric ward, and I was struck by how familiar it was. And surprised by a longing so deep for entering that sacred space and sharing that muddy time with people so unabashedly human that I could…
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I have been reading Annie Dillard’s ought-to-be-a-classic book For the Time Being very slowly. It’s a book that warrants the rereading of pages. There’s this one passage I’m totally stuck on. I’ve been reading it to everyone–in workshops, over the telephone. The passage calls me again and again. Here it is: There were no formerly…
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