Category: Writing
-
Celebrating good news!
When I was 21 and my father died, I stopped writing for 3 years. The DSM-5TR probably has a thing or two to say about how I handled my grief back then, but my writing block is all that’s relevant now. Because 19 years later, when my mother died, I fairly bled poems. If you…
-
What’s your story?
“What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To…
-
Taste of Summer
There are some books, some poets, that I instinctively associate with winter — Leslie Harrison’s Displacement, Frost, all the Russians (accurate or not) — but who do you think of as a summer poet? Lyrical, fulsome, hot… give me some recommendations. I’m in a mood. Life is bursting at the seams here. In addition to…
-
Auld Lang Syne
I don’t want to let the year end without saying that, for all of 2011’s sorrows, I am deeply and heartfelt-fully grateful for my family — my boys, my husband, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, etc. — and all my loyal and loving friends — virtual and otherwise. You remind me of what’s true and dear…
-
The Writing Blues
My children are ever so much more productively writing than I am. Vincent’s discovering the discoveries and challenges of reading and writing, and Aidan is doggedly working on his own mysterious pages. I, on the other hand, have written exactly two poems since my mother died. That Salamander will be publishing one of them in…
-
The Beaufort Scale
I’ve always been fascinated by the Beaufort Scale. It could be because the concept of measurement itself is intrinsically interesting, but how the Beaufort Scale grapples with wind is a sort of poetry. Its language is simple and elegant, metaphorical. And it’s served as a point of inspiration for: a book, Defining the Wind, this very cool art/poetry…
-
And the days go by
Non-writing activities have kept me busy this summer — work, Collected Poets planning for 2012, reading, afternoons at the state forest beach with the boys (that season pass was the best $35 I’ve ever spent!) — July slipped by like a field of fireflies winking out. Despite the surfeit of grief, it’s been nice. Come…
-
This week at Linebreak
Many of you will already have seen this on Facebook, but for those of you who’ve resisted the FB-lure, I’m happy to tell you that my poem is featured this week at Linebreak. You can read it here, with a terrific audio recording by Randall Mann. I love how he takes his time, savoring the…
-
Magical Thinking
If I’m mired in grief, it’s not for Mum’s death alone. Since March there have been so many losses: four mothers dead, and only one of them mine, and another just 42, just last week. This will surprise no one, but it’s not my grief that’s the most difficult, but the anguish of these bereft…
-
Despite it all…
…I know I’m lucky. I’m lucky that I was born to a great mother, that I loved her and told her so all the time. That I was able to be there for her and that she let me care for her was a real blessing. A critical illness has a way of burning away…
Marie Gauthier 