In the bath last night, it became clear to me that my marriage and divorce had finally and completely reshuffled in my mental-emotional deck to: past tense. As I steeped, I marveled that another human being could change symbolically so quickly and so significantly — from filling me with joy to filling me with despair to not filling me at … Read More
Take the envy and run
For three years, my son has been having a glorious love affair with the lovely grandma next door. They play marbles and dinosaurs, This-Little-Piggy, wrestling, and we all have dance jams to “All The Single Ladies.” This summer, a particularly romantic ritual developed: Jean would leave a bouquet of flowers from her yard woven into the chain link fence by … Read More
Poet’s Market, Writer’s Market & You
For 20 years or so, my life poetic has been steered by a single compass: Poet’s Market. In more recent years, when it occurred to me that all that other stuff I was writing happened to be essays and articles, I became a devotee of Writer’s Market as well. I don’t know how to emphasize the comfort these tomes have … Read More
We the breeders
This week, in a curly-headed flourish of time marching on, my son turned three. This anniversary of our shared birth into the context of family has been accompanied by my interview in the We Who Are About to Breed series of We Who Are About to Die. Both have me thinking. About what it has meant to become a mother. … Read More
Secure your own mask before assisting others
The flight attendant came to our aisle to make sure we were paying attention. She signaled to Jonny–the sweet, 20-something man whose girlfriend was also gluten intolerant, whose parents are too busy to travel to see him–seated beside my son, and let him know that he should secure his own mask before assisting his child. The flight attendant who had … Read More
Inhabiting the authority archetype
This week, I was pretty much knocked off my feet when I peeled back the packaging from my contributor’s copy of Poet’s Market 2012 and found my own name–that oddly familiar and now, suddenly somewhat alien collection of letters–looking back at me from the cover. Poet’s Market has been my constant companion for the past 20 years, accompanying my lifelong … Read More
Mother’s Day, blogging, and other ways to stretch
Yesterday, my son was gifted with a red and blue egg, each protecting its own, little wad of silly putty. The first thing he did was smoosh the two globs together into a swirly purple mash, stretch them out into “yours” and “mine” ends, and then start walking across the kitchen with his lump, while I stood in place holding … Read More
I’ll have a side of “g” with that
There is a word that appears many times in my book, spelled completely wrong: reigns. The word and meaning I intended were: reins. (As in, “Take the reins of your writing life in your own hands.”) Instead, I managed to say, approximately, “Take the (reigns) period during which a sovereign rules into your own hands.” Not at all what I … Read More
The death of the dream could be the birth of unprecedented possibility
I’ve tried to write about four different posts today. Because I don’t have the heart for any of them, they dragged. I dragged. The posts were boring and I was bored. Why all of this slow-poking around? Because I’ve been avoiding bringing to this page what is true for me today. And I because I know all too well that … Read More
making time for writing: part 6
TAKE A TIME-OUT I believe in signs. That’s why, when my ten-month-old son pulled the book Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest by Wayne Muller off the shelf for the third time, I decided it was time to read it. Guilty of preaching something akin to Sabbath in my book Writing the Life Poetic, but infrequently practicing it, this … Read More