Last Wednesday I woke to an email informing me that my beautiful, talented friend Terri S. Shrum passed away after a battle with cancer. She’d been diagnosed just weeks after she’d decided to pick up and move to Key West from New Orleans to devote herself to the craft of writing. I’d been reading the…
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I ended up not leaving the recording of me reading the poem in because it was so damn quiet. Talking to myself is 100% in my practice, but I think I’ve trained myself not to do it too loudly, so I just get quieter as the video continues. But it’s closed captioned, so you can…
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Monday I heard 4 spectacular poems in response to Brendan Constantine’s “The Needs of the Many,” and Brendan himself will join my groups Tuesday and Wednesday. And then AWP, the best/worst annual conference where all these people I love on the page and in person are in one place and there are so many books…
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I’ve been visiting my mother and grandmother for the past few days. I wake and have one cup of coffee by myself, then one cup of tea with my mother, then she leaves for work and I have a third cup of tea (and a glass of a terrible terrible fiber drink) with my grandmother…
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Oh dear dear dear ones. I missed posting last week entirely. It was a busy time. There was that incredible performance and the aftermath, and there was an important sad-anniversary for me. Now I am sitting at the airport, about to get on a plane and fly across the world. Away from my children, and…
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Some cool shit has been going down. Cool+Scary+Exhausting (like all the best things). And some magical dream stuff. I hope you’ll join us next week. We do lots of shows with the USO. I’ve done a fair number of readings out in the world. But these last few weeks working towards a more integrated single performance have…
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In every episode of the podcast On Being, Krista Tippet asks after her guests’ spiritual upbringing. It’s always fascinating to hear how various people raise their children and how those children grow up to be the sort of thinkers and world-changers who end up on On Being. It appears there is no definite right or…
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So I guess this is my last post of 2016. Which I am pretty glad about. I guess it’s also supposed to be a most hopeful, resolution-filled here’s how we’re going to be better in 2017 post as well (if you need that, look here for last year’s). Which isn’t exactly where my head is. I have…
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When my older son first got the hang of reading, it was all he did. I spent years teaching him how to read. Starting with showing him flashcards in the high chair as soon as he could sit up. I bribed, I coerced, I’d read half a story out loud and then walk away so…
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I wrote another post ahead of time, with a passage from a book and something about Robyn and dancing, and maybe you’ll see it next week. This morning I’m going to spend a few minutes just writing. I am trying to really think of Aleppo, and I am equally trying not to think about Aleppo. How…
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