Behind the scenes: the making of the breakfast blog!
“university creative-writing courses situate writers in the world that most of their readers inhabit—the world of mass higher education and the white-collar workplace. Sticking writers in a garret would isolate them. Putting them in the ivory tower puts them in touch with real life.”
“Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”
“There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world.”
Yes poetry still makes me feel shattered.
“Connoisseurs of reading are very silly people. But as Thomas Merton said, one day you wake up and realize religion is ridiculous and that you will stick with it anyway. What love is ever any different?”
Oh Mary Ruefle you slay me.
(Thanks, Sarah, for brightening my subway ride with A Little White Shadow)
This is what workshop comments from Sharon Olds look like. Could I be more charmed? (No.)