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February 2016Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.
When Words Are Scarce
There are no children’s books in your house growing up. No dictionaries. No encyclopedias. Not even a Bible to skim through. Your main reading material consists of Catholic leaflets given out at Sunday Mass.
December 2015
The Permission Slip
It’s never been easy for me to talk openly with my father. Now I have to talk openly with him about an essay that describes, among other things, how difficult it is for me to talk openly with him.
November 2015
The Book I’m Writing
is a book about loss and heartbreak, / also delusion, distaste, quiet villainy, and sabotage. / There’s a strong pulse of hope near the beginning, / the rhythm of which weakens as the narrative develops.
September 2015That Terrible Thoreau
As the class winds down, I go over the answers to the quiz: Thoreau moved into his ten-by-fifteen-foot cabin on July 4, Independence Day, 1845. He chose that day to make the point that political independence is just the beginning. We’re not completely free until we also throw off our inner masters: greed, laziness, ignorance.
September 2015
The Typewriter In The Basement
Once again a student asks me why I became a writer and this time I say: Because of the staggered, staccato music of my dad’s old typewriter in the basement. Because when he really got going, you could listen to it like a song. Because after a while you could tell if he was writing a book review or a letter just from the shift and drift and thrum of the thing. Because it sounded cheerful and businesslike and efficient and workmanlike and true.
July 2015
Shakespeare’s Sister
excerpted from
A Room Of One’s Own
Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her.
April 2015
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