The kid in the featured photo is graduating from high school this week. He read that hardcover Dick and Jane until the spine basically dissolved. He just felt so happy to be a person who could read, so impressed by himself (and with good reason, if I may say so–he was barely four). He doesn’t…
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I know last week I said I’d tell you about Bad Stories, and I will soon. That post is waiting patiently in my drafts, but this weekend is a bit loaded and warrants something else. Yesterday my mom arrived back in town and her hair has gotten long and she casually mentioned that she wrote…
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When was the last time I told you how grateful I am for your eyes on this page? Has it been too long? I’m sorry. I’m grateful for all the ways I get to communicate authentically with authentic people. It is literally the single greatest privilege of my life. I’d be so confused without it.…
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There are a lot of things that I’m reading and thinking about that I want to tell you about, but time seems to have shrunk lately, or maybe it’s just that casual words are harder. I was away for a few days and met a bunch of stunning brilliant people who kept giving me book…
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Yesterday I went to a poetry salon at a lovely art and book-filled home in Georgetown to benefit the Folger’s poetry programs where Carolyn Forche (who is reading at the Folger tonight) read poems to a small audience and everyone leaned in in in to hear her read from the sheafs of paper she’d brought and…
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I’ve been having a killer week in books. I’m reading Bad Stories by Steve Almond (more on that soon), Registered of Illuminated Villages by Tarfia Faizullah, Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter by Elizabeth Powell and twice this week I read What the Living Do by Marie Howe.I’ve also gone ahead and ordered a new bookshelf for my bedroom. On Sunday I…
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I came across this interview of Mary Oliver done by my dear friend Renee Olander. I don’t agree with everything anyone says, not even the very clever and brilliant Mary Oliver, but one thing she said in this interview has been turning over and over in my head. I never had any other notion than…
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Saturday before last, a wonder-friend sent me this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. So many times, as we navigated the crowds and listened to the children speak and watched little kids holding signs that said, “I don’t want to be next,”at the March For Our Lives, I felt overwhelmed by the magnitude and sorrow and…
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The writing of poetry has fallen behind the business of poetry lately, and while that’s sometimes how it has to be, I feel it like a crick in my neck. When you ignore the poems, they stop coming and I’m always afraid that I’ll have neglected them too long. But I tend to find my…
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I have had some of this written for a long time, but trying to choose the right poem has been harder than usual. A few weeks ago I read The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2017 essay collection. As one would expect, much of the writing deals with climate change: glaciers shifting and melting, light…
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