writing small. making things with yarn. trying to have faith.
Selections from "Jazz," by Henri Matisse. At the Baltimore Museum of Art. This week I learned a new word (don't you love when that happens?), in a recorded session of a workshop called Create + Engage, hosted by Anna Brones, an artist whose newsletter is one of my favorite inbox arrivals. One of the guests… Continue reading Things Come Together
Note to self. When I started the MFA at Lindenwood U., I started blogging again so I could reflect on my MFA experience. I had good intentions (and you know what they say about those...!) of starting from the very beginning. Oops. I'm about to finish my fourth class in the program, coming up on… Continue reading Year (of MFA) in Review
Smithsonian Institute, D.C. After years--decades, even--of window-shopping for MFA programs, fantasizing about weeks away on residencies, deciding I was nowhere near ready to apply, tussling with myself about whether this is a wish or a pipe dream or a calling or just a relic of who I was once... .... I found and applied for… Continue reading Impulse? or Inspiration?
The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. I am not an impulsive person. About two years ago I realized if I ever wanted to seriously consider applying for an MFA program, I had work to do. Not only was I not ready to do a program, I wasn't even ready to apply for a program. I didn't have… Continue reading Ready, or not
The word wall at Planet Word, D.C. From the time I discovered there was such a thing as a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing, I've wanted to do one. That was a long time ago, but for many years there was not a time when it "made sense" for me. Early on… Continue reading Who knows where, or when
Spoiler: you can't. Apparently. Lately I've realized I'm more in the habit of thinking of myself as a writer than of actually being a writer. My first publication was in the newspaper in Springfield, Missouri, when I was in first grade. It was an exceptional (if I do say so myself) poem about our puppy… Continue reading The Writer’s Life; Or, How to Succeed in Writing Without Actually Writing
Today's reading: Matt. 13:31-35, 44-52About three and a half years ago, we found out we’d be moving to Beaufort, South Carolina... and I started reading Pat Conroy.This is what we readers do: we use books to go places, the places we never expect to visit and also the places we have to learn to think… Continue reading The Most Powerful Words
a moving yarn: 