When I was fifteen, studying at a private high school, I wanted to write an author report on Sandra Cisneros, the most important writer of my young but committed reading life (I was the sort of kid who skipped class to read). I was told by my English teacher that if I was interested in…
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I’m working on (aka second-guessing and rewriting) a new non-fiction manuscript and I’m also facing some big changes/challenges in non-writing parts of my work (more info very soon). Both have me returning repeatedly to the question of knowing, of certainty. Each day I seem to cycle through optimism, worthlessness, self-doubt, absolute confidence, complete devastation, giddiness, and…
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I haven’t posted in SO long, that guilt is like a puppy that won’t leave me alone (and I don’t really like puppies that much). So this poem I’m working on is here to say some stuff–at first I thought, I shouldn’t post this thing I’m working on, what if someone reads it and sends…
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I really love yoga, and I swear it keeps my head straight and I don’t know what I’d do without it. But I’m really irked by pop-performance-yoga culture, it’s so annoying. That said, I definitely do the fuck out of some yoga. I just, like, don’t have the beads or whatever. I like to be…
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Tonight, at 8 pm We Are Not Done Yet, a documentary film about ten veterans who came together to heal through poetry, airs on HBO. I’m so so proud to have been involved with it. But this was one project, with ten veterans. It’s not the first performance we’ve done with a group of talented,…
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Saturday morning I woke up and frantically looked for a Jimmy Santiago Baca poem that I wanted to quote in my book, and I couldn’t find it, though I skimmed the two books I thought it might be in. I knew I’d posted it on facebook four or five years ago, so I did a…
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I’m finishing reading The Art of the Wasted Day, a book of essays about the lost practice of leisure time by Patricia Hampl. I’d been waiting until I completed a bunch of tasks to properly earn reading it (whatever that means), and packed it with me on a trip to Telluride for the (incredible, heart and mind…
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If you’re in or around New Jersey this weekend, I’m reading at the Ridgewood Library. What’s really exciting is that my name is misspelled in this headline. This is not at all unusual, I just sent an email asking for a correction elsewhere. How it goes. The lack of symmetry! Why don’t I have two…
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I was reading an essay about teaching creative non-fiction in Creative Non-Fiction Magazine a couple of months ago (I know, I know, we gaze so studiously at our own navels, writers), and came across a reference to Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter.” The reference was matter of fact, sort of assuming that if…
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My friend Renee Olander has a gorgeous book that’s just come out, and she mailed me these beautiful cards with the cover on one side and a poem, “Scared of Devils” on the other side. When I was a kid, I was very conscious of my parents’ mortality. Perhaps more than normal. I’d check if…
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