prayer
Re: prayer
Sooooooo gentle and beautiful, Abby... like you.
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
~ Oscar Wilde
Re: prayer
I love the pictures, of course, with the written word. Turns it into something else, a story.
As I was reading, which was a compelling tale with powerful images yet so colloquial, to which all of us can relate, I thought: she would write marvelous narrative. Do you write fiction, stories?
The last four lines of this piece are spectacular!
Thanks,
Marcia
As I was reading, which was a compelling tale with powerful images yet so colloquial, to which all of us can relate, I thought: she would write marvelous narrative. Do you write fiction, stories?
The last four lines of this piece are spectacular!
Thanks,
Marcia
Re: prayer
Hi Marcia. Almost never. But in the most recent issue of The Sun there's a piece by Lad Tobin about his first therapy session. You can read it here: http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/452/my ... inute_hour , though I highly suggest getting the print edition- it's such a lovely magazine. In the piece, Tobin writes:
"I figure Miller [the therapist] will now acknowledge that I have pretty much nailed the therapy process, but instead he says, 'What you’re describing isn’t therapy; it’s opera.'
His reference to opera hits on several core truths: My parents always had season tickets to the Lyric Opera of Chicago. There was always a lot of sturm und drang in their marriage. And I do imagine therapy as theater. That Miller has hit all these targets in one shot only makes me madder. I insist that I’m not interested in a therapist who will offer glib interpretations of everything I say; I’m interested in finding someone who can help me arrive at my own interpretations.
'OK, so let me see if I have this right,' Miller says, smiling. 'I’m supposed to act nothing like your father, but I’m also supposed to act exactly like your father?'
I have that sickening feeling you get when you realize you have just been checkmated. I respond, naturally, with adolescent sarcasm: 'Wow. So you’ve already figured out that I’ve got some issues with my father? That’s really impressive.' And then, just to drive home the point that it has taken me only twenty minutes of therapy to regress more than twenty years, I add, 'What do you want: a medal or a monument?'"
I laughed out loud. It was so good I became a little obsessed with him and discovered that he teaches composition- particularly creative non-fiction, a kind of writing that I didn't know had a name. And now I feel compelled to try writing creative non-fiction.
In his book Reading Student Writing, Tobin writes, "The comedian Jonathan Katz tells a joke that goes something like this: 'Don't you hate it when you make a Freudian slip? Just the other day I was out to lunch with my father and I meant to say, 'Dad, would you please pass the ketchup?' but instead I said, 'You asshole, thanks for fucking up my entire childhood.'" He goes on to say, "I think about this joke whenever I read the first drafts of my students' personal narratives. What I notice immediately about these essays are the striking differences between what many of my students mean to say- about their families, their feelings, and themselves- and what actually comes out."
Over the past few years some of the writers I have enjoyed most include Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott. I particularly loved Belden C. Lane's The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. They're writing creative non-fiction, no? Or does the genre have something about spirituality in the name? I think I just love that I might be able to write in my style and call it something other than poetry. Yick.
"I figure Miller [the therapist] will now acknowledge that I have pretty much nailed the therapy process, but instead he says, 'What you’re describing isn’t therapy; it’s opera.'
His reference to opera hits on several core truths: My parents always had season tickets to the Lyric Opera of Chicago. There was always a lot of sturm und drang in their marriage. And I do imagine therapy as theater. That Miller has hit all these targets in one shot only makes me madder. I insist that I’m not interested in a therapist who will offer glib interpretations of everything I say; I’m interested in finding someone who can help me arrive at my own interpretations.
'OK, so let me see if I have this right,' Miller says, smiling. 'I’m supposed to act nothing like your father, but I’m also supposed to act exactly like your father?'
I have that sickening feeling you get when you realize you have just been checkmated. I respond, naturally, with adolescent sarcasm: 'Wow. So you’ve already figured out that I’ve got some issues with my father? That’s really impressive.' And then, just to drive home the point that it has taken me only twenty minutes of therapy to regress more than twenty years, I add, 'What do you want: a medal or a monument?'"
I laughed out loud. It was so good I became a little obsessed with him and discovered that he teaches composition- particularly creative non-fiction, a kind of writing that I didn't know had a name. And now I feel compelled to try writing creative non-fiction.
In his book Reading Student Writing, Tobin writes, "The comedian Jonathan Katz tells a joke that goes something like this: 'Don't you hate it when you make a Freudian slip? Just the other day I was out to lunch with my father and I meant to say, 'Dad, would you please pass the ketchup?' but instead I said, 'You asshole, thanks for fucking up my entire childhood.'" He goes on to say, "I think about this joke whenever I read the first drafts of my students' personal narratives. What I notice immediately about these essays are the striking differences between what many of my students mean to say- about their families, their feelings, and themselves- and what actually comes out."
Over the past few years some of the writers I have enjoyed most include Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott. I particularly loved Belden C. Lane's The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. They're writing creative non-fiction, no? Or does the genre have something about spirituality in the name? I think I just love that I might be able to write in my style and call it something other than poetry. Yick.