In a writing group this week, someone asked me what they should be writing about. They said, “No offense, but I don’t care about poetry or whatever. Writing has been one of the things that’s helped me and I want to do it right.” Well, no offense taken. Poetry is immediate, precise, emotionally honest, and…
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In the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about the common penchant for outrage, how people seem to need (or at least really like) to find something to brace against. To, in Leslie Jamison’s words “be shaped by opposition.” I see it in my kids, how they want to be angry at someone (usually the…
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A few nights ago, I was at a beautiful dinner with some of the loveliest people. One of them said something that while ordinarily would have certainly made me sad or worried, on this night brought tears to my eyes. I blinked rapidly for a minute, but couldn’t hold it. I had to excuse myself…
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On Mother’s Day, the kids and I have a tradition: we go on a hike by the river. I wish we did it every Sunday. But our weekends are so completely hyper-scheduled with games and practices and obligations. I spend more time sitting on the sidelines with people I barely know who happen to have…
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Why not a super close up the nose shot? I know it’s poetry month. There is all this division around genre–this is how you write fiction, this is how you write poems, this is how you write a personal essay, a lyric essay, blah blah blah. But the best pieces of writing have some…
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The picture above was one I took from the back corner of an auditorium where I was lucky to get a place to sit on the floor, with my back against the wall, behind the speakers, to hear some of my literary heroes talk about process and feminism and the body in literature. That crowd,…
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This week I had writing groups with people interested in learning from me and one another, poems in my inbox, sunny days, Cinnamon Toast Crunch on sale at the grocery store. I hung out with friends and family, made it to yoga, wrote some things. Kids snuggled beside me. My apartment is clean. I…
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It feels pretty good to accomplish big things, to complete projects we’ve started, to end a week of writing and creating art with a big, awesome performance as we did this week. But it can also leave you feeling empty somehow. A feeling of, Now what? I imagine some of the writers I worked with…
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