Language can eclipse reality. The names we give things are useful as labels, but they also generalize and standardize till we no longer see the thing before us. Here is a horse, we think, and having identified it, we stop … Continue reading
Tag Archives: writing craft
Our experiences and our emotions can seem so complicated and contradictory as to be impossible to express. This is why writers, such as Li-Young Lee, turn to images. In a poem which starts, “No easy thing to bear, the weight of … Continue reading
“We’ll just have to sell him,” I remember my mother saying with finality. “It will be a long winter and I will be alone here with only these children to help me. Besides, he eats too much and we will … Continue reading
Cut Flowers Because I want the blooms to last,I scald the stemsof roses, hold an orange poppy to a matchuntil the milk burns in the flame.It’s an art they call conditioning.I crush the base of a chrysanthemum—the heads keep blooming, rootless,like the … Continue reading
English Flavors I love to lick English the way I licked the hardround licorice sticks the Belgian nuns gave me for sixgood conduct points on Sundays after mass. Love it when ‘plethora’, ‘indolence’, ‘damask,’or my new word: ‘lasciviousness,’ stain my tongue,thicken … Continue reading