Yesterday our family was shattered by the news of the death of my niece, who was about the same age as my older daughters. Last night, feeling aimless and bereaved, I wandered out to my writing cabin and picked up Katherine Paterson’s book of essays, Gates of Excellence. She had this solace for me, and maybe for you, […]
“You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.” –Anonymous “To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence.” –Cesar Chavez Or we have this advice: Poem #1755 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, […]
I have been thinking about how to begin. This morning I came across this passage in James L. Hill’s African American Review 42.2 (Summer 2008) interview with poet Colleen J. McElroy. It has some wisdom for anyone who is (like me) trying to transition from a busy teaching year to a summer of writing. “…I […]
alchemy (noun) 1.an early form of chemistry, with philosophic and magical associations, studied in the Middle Ages: its chief aims were to change base metals into gold and to discover the elixir of perpetual youth 2.a power or process of changing one thing into another; esp., a seemingly miraculous power or process of changing a […]