Before that, before I’d walked off from her, she’d fastened my shirt by one more button. “It looks better this way,” she’d said. I liked to wear my shirts a little open, the way James Spader characters did in his early movies, when I was young. But when I asked her if she were sure and she said, “One thousand percent,” I believed her. Even though I didn’t know where she got her authority, I believed her.
Why We Write
I told those students to imagine how it would feel to him if he could know that somebody had dropped out of his everyday life, knelt in the grass, and photographed his words, because they had to be shared, and shared immediately. I told them about this because I figured really, this is why we read. Really, this is why write.
The End of a Marriage
She thought it was old-fashioned, in a way, the way they married. There they were, a hip couple of Baltimore artists, Billy a musician and she a painter, living in the eclectic neighborhood of Mt Vernon. They were not the type, she thought, who got married because of an accidental pregnancy. And they did not do it because it was the right thing to do, though their Midwestern upbringing could have arisen something ingrained in them. They did it because, at the time, it "felt" right.
A Man of His Words; Walking Bayside; No Man Is an Island
Dissolving in another’s joy, Open to another’s hurt, reaching out…. yet he stays on ease of soil, Hard of head, tender of foot.
Suburban Hell
Do authors still care what readers think? Are they writing for an audience? Is this “novel writing business” still about entertainment? I guess. Whatever. Consider me entertained, just make it Cormac McCarthy dark. If I ever meet the man, I’ll thank him for his contributions to the literary canon and like Mr. Franzen remind him it’s not his fault Oprah picked him.
Courtship; Proposal; On My Morning Walk It Occurs to Me that My Name is Similar to Billy Collins; Mr. Hollands Explains His Tattoo to His Students; The Great Poet Said
I have a stack of unfinished poems in my drawer – many there for years, decades – some missing just a word, one perfect word. Nodding undergraduate heads.