— click on the link to watch this interview with Bill Kenower. O’Rourke says some wonderfully wise things about how she navigated her grief over her mother’s death.
“It is so painful and so terrible to go through a loss, but ideally it deepens us and connects us to others.” -Meghan O’Rourke, poet and author of The Long Goodbye.
“Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12, I am there ready for it.” -Flannery O’Connor
This morning I am back at work … or trying to be. I found this quote in Barbara Abercrombie’s A Year of Writing Dangerously, and it helps to think of the great Flannery O’Connor staring at a blank sheet of paper, too.
Thanks to Kathleen Kirk, several of my poems are now published (with art!) at Escape Into Life: http://www.escapeintolife.com/poetry/bethany-reid/
You should also check out Kathleen’s personal blog — Wait! I Have a Blog?! — which includes links to her poetry. Today she blogged about thistle, which explains my featured photo (rather proud that I captured this).
I need to upload my pix from Idaho to the computer…but I am home again, sitting in my writing space, scribbling away.
We left my sister’s place above Lewiston, Idaho, at 7:15 yesterday morning, dropped my mom off at her place in Chehalis at 8 p.m., and didn’t arrive home until 10 p.m. It was a great visit with my sister, my brother-in-law, and their boys, and we stopped on the way home to see my aunt and uncle, and a niece….I drank a lot of coffee.
This morning I’m trying to find a handhold on this rock ledge so I can step back up and into the path again.
“I think of the journal as a witness, a repository and a playground. It is where I begin things or bring thoughts to some kind of clarity.” -Dorothy Allison