When I started blogging — about three blogs ago now — and well, these were different times, but I had a rule for myself that I wouldn’t quote from anything that I hadn’t read in its entirety. This is a pretty sound practice in general, still though, right? I don’t stick to it one … | Continue reading
The typewriter is a recurring theme here and it seems that I’m overdue on sharing some poems about them, about the act of typing, and the music of typing. I love how Clarice Lispector and Annie Dillard and May Sarton wrote about typewriters and typing in their prose and I’ve shar … | Continue reading
There’s something telling me to just stay with the soul work, and that the answer is there somehow. Or maybe, and possibly better, there are questions to ask. … | Continue reading
I was pretty obsessed back in the day with the album The Very Best of Sheryl Crow It was in heavy rotation in my household when it came out, and recently is again! 2003 is when it arrived — how can that even be?? What I love is that both my daughter, who is another city, and I ar … | Continue reading
I often get in the right frame of mind, as you know, by listening to or reading an On Being program. Today I tuned into the Listening Party celebration. Kind of hard not to get teary-eyed listening but as always, worth the emotions. I’ve been inspired by On Being and so grateful … | Continue reading
Perhaps it’s not surprising that I’ve been returning to thinking about the soul. I’ve been immersing myself, trying to, in soul work. If you’ve read my novel Rumi and the Red Handbag, then you know that the book is preoccupied with questions of the soul. I’m most interested with … | Continue reading
I keep learning lessons from my still life practice, which is why mainly I think I’ve been able to keep at it, in spite of all the challenges of the last 2+ years. I understand composition better than when I started. I’ve learned by looking at others’ still lifes, but I’ve mainly … | Continue reading
Who wouldn’t want to read a book titled Poetry’s Possible Worlds? If you’re a steady reader of this blog, I can guarantee you will be delighted by this book. What I have learned in writing this and other blogs and referencing poetry for eons, is that readers take poetry personall … | Continue reading
What if the message were Goethe’s, “Do not hurry; do not rest.” Or maybe the message is from Prince:“Dearly belovedWe are gathered here todayTo get through this thing called life?”Maybe the message is a bird that arrives. Maybe an angel. In the photograph accompanying this post, … | Continue reading
This is a post that begins and ends by saying, “trust me.” This is a post written from a place of pure love. This is a post about how an author can change your life, about how books matter, and about how writers are simultaneously magical and utterly real. It’s also a post that r … | Continue reading
I firmly believe that the more creative you are, the more creative you are. When you’re a creative person, your default is creativity. Your default is flowering. Your default is fecundity. But. There will be obstacles. In White Ink, Hélène Cixous says, “Fecundity is the creative … | Continue reading
“We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker…”This is from an essay I’ve long had in the back of my mind by Brenda Ueland, titled “The Art of Lis … | Continue reading
A post I wrote in September of 2018 titled, 10 Poems for Loss, Grief, Consolation has been consistently the top post here on Transactions with Beauty. It has always been popular, but in the last two years, as you can imagine, the stats on this post keep growing. In my intro to th … | Continue reading
Every day I think, the world cannot get any worse, and every day it is. At what point do we turn our backs on beauty? I think the answer is that we need to keep renewing it, keep planting the sunflower seeds, keep sowing beauty. A few people I know are thinking about retraining i … | Continue reading
Let me begin by saying this is a proper Covid post, which is to say, yes, I have Covid at this very moment. So whatever incoherence follows, we shall lay all blame on my present rubbish state of health. (That said it could be so much worst and I’m so grateful to have been vaccina … | Continue reading
Does the how of reading poetry change? Through time, through your life, because of external forces, internal ones? It’s poetry month and I find myself thinking about poetry as a vessel, and coming back to the book by Jane Hirshfield — Ledger. … | Continue reading