1. I was standing in the kitchen of a rental house in the middle of forty acres of woods deep in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, when I told my agent I wanted to write about the death penalty, a topic that had chased me for over a decade. I’d only recently sold my first young adult novel, so I came at him hesitantly and with a caution I rarely trot out when discussing my own work. I process ideas... Read more
I’m trying to trust in God. My husband has had chronic fatigue and chest pain for the five years since his quadruple bypass open-heart surgery. Sometimes less discomfort, sometimes more, but always there. His various doctors have tried everything to relieve his distress…but nothing works. He is suffering, and it naturally pains me to see my beloved enduring this suffering without hope of relief. So I talk to God, saying (as if to talk myself into trust): There is only... Read more
Denis Johnson died this past summer at the age of 67. Many have said that he was the single greatest writer of his generation, and the praise is warranted. Read more
Sixteen years later, 9/11 seems so distant that it is merely a touchstone for rhetoric. But for those of us who lived in New York and D.C., the memory courses on. Read more
In this stirring poem by Anya Silver, the bell becomes a blueprint. First, the bell shape is transposed on her own body dangling freely in the “arc and blur” of a rope swing. Then, it becomes her open mouth and uvula. And, finally, we see the heart as a shattered peony (“unpeeling, pealing”) dropping petals and making its own adoring sound. I appreciate the transformative power of this poem and how each line offers a surprising new reflection. Poem as... Read more
I will not claim credit for many things, but one virtue I own is that you can’t make me disloyal to that which I’ve grown attached. Even in my youth, when it was very important to me that I like what everyone else liked, I would not detach myself from that to which I had given allegiance. And the deeper the love, the more fiercely would I hold tight. Once I’m in, I’m in. To wit, I am a Glen... Read more
Getting a tattoo is not only about deciding what to etch onto one’s body forever, but also about deciding what brief monologue will be uttered any time someone points to the ink and asks: “What does it mean?” The expectation is universal: people want something succinct, a response that suspends their judgment, an answer that elicits both empathy and admiration. Until recently, I had three tattoos, which meant that I had three mini-monologues with interchangeable elements depending on the age,... Read more
“We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got,” sang Ziggy Stardust forty-five years ago. Did people feel a prickling in 1977, as if Bowie might be prophet? It’s not so hard to believe. Do people ever forget to fear burning to death once they’ve imagined burning in their beds, under their desks, in their basements? I pretended to be my mom as a child when I played in her parents’ basement, taking deep breaths of the tang made by the... Read more
“Lord, let…”: this is how nearly every sentence of Nicholas Samaras’s “The Psalm of Your Face” begins. It’s our own constant plea to God: Lord, let my neighbor be healed of cancer; Lord, let my son be safe in battle. In Samaras’s poem, the pleas “Lord, let…” are first focused on God’s imagined face. But soon (as in most biblical psalms), the plea is for the speaker himself. So, for instance, “Lord, let your face be lined” (line 1) becomes... Read more
There on my bookcase was a row of nine matching hardbacks. On their spines, a woodcut of an angular man with a pipe and smoking jacket, each volume with its own elaborate Victorian wallpaper-inspired paisley or floral design. I’d found them years ago at a used bookstore: $9.00 for the full Book-of-the-Month Club edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes. I used to love detective stories as a child, which is why I bought these in the first place, though I... Read more
Good Letters
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