Personal essayists, poets and memoir writers face many questions about making personal truths public. In the following essay, author Migael Scherer evokes the effects on her readers as well as on herself of her writing about painful truth. Even as she is about to accept a distinguished award, she must brace herself for the dissonance … Continue reading
When writing moves us to struggle against a taboo, especially one that demands silence, we can expect powerful resistance. It is natural to feel alone, even besieged. The resistance to our words comes both from ourselves and from others. If we respect the struggle of our readers to understand with us, so also may come … Continue reading
If March comes in like a lion, they say, it’ll go out like a lamb and vise versa. I’d like to combine this notion with an idea that Keats termed “negative capability.” He said that a good poem holds within it one thing as well as its opposite. For example, when we eulogize someone’s death, … Continue reading