Kind dears, I am averaging a post every other week. I have heard your outcry, and I apologize, I apologize, I apologize (maybe go into the archives when you really need a prompt–there are years of writing back there). This thesis writing thing is sort of kicking my ass. But stick with me. Just…
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This week I attended an Ashtanga yoga class for maybe the second time in my life. The sequences are repetitive, you do a run through with the teacher’s guidance, and then repeat the sequence on your own three times. Every time the teacher said, “Okay, now do it on your own,” I suffered a little…
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Tell me to what you pay attention and I’ll tell you who you are. –Jose Ortega y Gasset I’ve been slowly reading and writing notes from The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser since March. It was recommended to me by my brilliant friend Renee, and I ordered it immediately on my phone from her…
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This past week we were talking a little about social media and the ways it interferes with our idea of our sense of self. How through it, we can often create these really false images of ourselves that we might then feel required to live up (or in some cases down) to–so we’re literally setting…
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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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The other week at art we were talking about the importance of writing when we are up as much as when we are down. Letters from a past self who can remind us of what was good when things seem low. The opportunity to look back and survey our lives through our journals…
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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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Earlier this week, I was honored to recieve an awesome award from the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore and my handsome tuxedo-clad son took this picture of me. There was something about the experience that felt kind of like being at my own funeral. I don’t know how to explain that further, but I think…
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