on seeing Bill Cunningham in person (!!), silvered friendship, good news for my son, the Caldecott Panel

There was no evidence of a bicycle, but Bill Cunningham, New York Times style photographer and the subject of this amazing documentary (watched here because Melissa Sarno gave me the word), was out among the nearly 200 craftspeople at the 38th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show.

He just kept passing by—lanky and tipping up on his toes, camera in hand, a coy smile when someone called out, "Are you Bill Cunningham?" Oh, jeepers, his smile said, recognized again. He just kept looking and nodding, his presence electrifying the crowd. Bill Cunningham in Philadelphia. Yes, we Philadelphians felt proud.

Meanwhile, I bought a glorious something from Cathy Rose of New Orleans (worth taking a look at this link, truly her work is remarkable)—an addition to my small but growing doll and mask collection. Meanwhile, my husband and I went off for a Reading Terminal lunch—Salumeri's, of course. Meanwhile, we returned to a lit-up sky and I slipped out for a Kelly Simmons rendezvous—a gir's afternoon, silver and gold. When I returned home, walking a brisk dark, a full moon rising, my son called with deliriously good news. You want to know the definition of perseverance, creativity, optimism, extreme hard work, and lessons in hopefulness? I will tell you the story of these past few months and my son. I will tell you everything he taught me, and I will say, again and for the record, I would be half the person that I am without him.

Today I'm off to the woods to teach memoir at the Schuylkill Center, part of the Musehouse Writing Retreat. I'll slip away afterward to see my friend Karen Rile. And then I'll come home and get ready for tomorrow, when I'll see my dear friend Jennifer Brown moderating the Caldecott panel—Chris Van Allsburg, David Wiesner, and Brian Selznick—at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood. (Two o'clock, and hosted by Children's Book World.)

And then I, like the rest of the world, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I will just sit and think on it all.

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less than solitary: reconnecting with an old friend for a new project

Years ago, when I was young—wait. Was I ever young? Not that I can remember. I'll start again.

Reboot:

Books ago, I had the pleasure of working on a corporate fairy tale with my friend Matt Emmens, a book we called Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business. Zenobia, an Alice in Wonderland-like adventure through a dying (but then rejuvenated) corporation, ended up selling to a dozen foreign publishers. It broadened my collaboration with my husband, who created the book's fabulous illustrations. And it deepened my friendship with Matt, who had CEO'd many of the companies I've worked for through the years, but who I respect even more for his many passions and pursuits.

This past week, I had an excuse to again spend time talking with Matt as I continued work on a strange and percolating project. I asked Matt questions, and he summoned details. I asked for the sound of talk, and he recreated conversations. I sent him the chapter his knowledge had helped me write, and he sent back notes. You should consider. Drop the octagon. That would singular, not plural. If you're considering a night scene, consider this.

There's a lot of just plain hardship that goes along with writing. There's a lot of solitary. But when there's the chance to ask questions, go ask the questions. Your book will be better off. And so will you.

Speaking of less than solitary, in a few hours I'll be at Rosemont College for the annual Philadelphia Stories Push to Publish conference. First up for me (1:15), a memoir/nonfiction panel with my long-time friend Karen Rile and Anne Kaier. Second up (2:30), a marketing for published authors panel with another dear friend (Kelly Simmons) and Donna Galanti. From there, I'm rushing back home for a quick change and a nervous drive to a local stage, where I'll be dancing the cha cha with my husband.

I'm sleeping in tomorrow morning. Then I'll get up and work with a few new details dear Mr. Emmens just sent me.

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talking about friends, talking about writing, talking and blogging, here we go

Writer, editor, mother, yoga-ist, friend—Katrina Kenison has been there, over and again, in my writing life. One of the first to read and write of my first book about reading and writing: Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World. One of the first to read and write of my second book about reading and writing: Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir (I had arrived, at long last, at the grave of my great-grandfather, Horace Kephart, in Bryson City, NC, when Katrina's note about Handling floated in—perfect timing, for Katrina had once found and sent to me as a gift a rare copy of one of Horace Kephart's books).  

Katrina has understood what few others haven't. She has written memoirs that I have loved and celebrated—Mitten Strings for God, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, Magical Journey. She edited, for many years, Best American Short Stories, and so she knows a thing or two about fiction, too. And her blog? Beloved.

When Katrina asked if I might participate in the latest blog-a-thon (is that a word? I don't know), I said yes. Because another very dear friend, Patty Chang Anker (Some Nerve, a memoir about facing the things we fear), had asked me the same question a few weeks earlier, when I was deluged, I'm tagging her back here. Patty and I recently shared the most spectacular night in New York City, when both of our books were nominated for a Books for a Better Life Award. Check out her popular blog and find out what this former non-cyclist spent her weekend.

I have two other friends/writers/editors I'm eager to introduce in this very blog post. So I'll quickly move through the a-thon questions. Here we go:

What am I working on?

On April 1, Going Over, my Berlin 1983 novel, was released. I am working on — well, I'm working on surviving the angst/suspense/fear/release that goes along with the publication of each book. I'm getting better at this. I'm trusting fate more. I'm living with who I am, which is this sort of idiosyncratic YA writer whose YA books don't fall into easy categories, which is to say they aren't easily marketed, which is to say, I'm still just Beth Kephart, A Moonlight Writer if Ever There Was One. Real life, for me, is the boutique marketing communications business I run, the stories I write for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the reviews I write for Chicago Tribune, and, in the spring, the creative nonfiction class I teach at Penn. That class recently ended. I'm still sobbing. But I digress.

A few days ago, Publishers Weekly kindly announced my next two books. And so, cheatingly, I share that announcement here:

As reported in PW Children's Bookshelf, April 28, 2014:

Tamra Tuller at Chronicle has acquired two books by NBA-nominated author Beth Kephart. Set in Florence, Italy, One Thing Stolen follows Nadia Cara as she mysteriously begins to change. She's become a thief, she has secrets she can't tell, and when she tries to speak, the words seem far away.This Is the Story of You takes place in an island beach town in the aftermath of a super storm; Mira, a year-rounder stranded for weeks without power, hopes to return storm-tossed treasures to their rightful owners, and restore some sense of order to an unrecognizable world. Publication is scheduled for spring 2015 and spring 2016; Amy Rennert of the Amy Rennert Agency did the deal for world rights.

How does my work/writing differ from others in its genre?

So many ways to answer this question. But I'll be brief. What I write is Kephartian. Linguistically intense. Erupted from the heart. Framed by big questions of history and humanity. That works for some people. It doesn't work for others. And this is not to say (because that would be a lie) that others in my genre don't pursue the same humanity, history, and heart. Others do. In a minute you'll meet A.S. King. You'll see what I mean.

Why do I write what I do?

Because I can't help it. I know that sounds flippant, or something (would flippant be the right word?). But it's as honest as I can be. I write what I must write, what draws me to it urgently, what can't be suppressed, what wakes me up. It all comes from the gut, and then from a heck of a lot of research. I wish I had a plan. I just have instincts.

How does my writing process work?

I could write on and on and on (blog pages!) about all the times the process doesn't work. When it does work, I kiss the wing tips of some theoretical muse (or the nose of my tall wooden giraffe, which is my actual muse) and ask no questions. Thank you thank you thank you thank you. That's what I say. Then pray I'll get the ineffable good-luck process back some other day.

All righty, all righty, enough on me. Now I get to get back to my friends, A.S. King and Karen Rile, who are going to answer their own questions on their own blogs next week.

So let's start with A.S., who is also Amy, who is also (to me) King, who is also Dude. Or. Wait. Dude is what Amy calls me. What Amy calls us. Dude is the name of our extended family. Whatever it is, you know her. She is, perhaps, the most starred YA author working today. She has awards falling out of her overall pockets. John Green has called her a goddess, but Beth Kephart called her a goddess first, and in this case, Beth Kephart Rules. The Dust of 100 Dogs, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, Everyone Sees the Ants, Ask the Passengers, Reality Boy, the forthcoming Glory O'Brien's History of the Future. These are King books. This is the King legacy. You can read all about them here.

And you can read what I wrote about King on her most recent birthday here.

Then there's Karen Rile, aka editor of Cleaver Magazine, aka my dear friend at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches fiction and other things to loving students, while teaching how to be a teacher to moi. Cleaver has rocked the lit world, since it was founded not long ago. Below are the facts as Karen provides them. Here is what I had to say when Cleaver launched.

Cleaver Magazine shares “cutting-edge” artwork and literary work from a mix of established and emerging voices. We were founded in January 2013 and are currently preparing our 6th full-length issue, which will launch on June 11, 2014.

We are a web-based magazine. In our first year we received 60,000 unique visits and over 100,000 hits. To give an idea of our readership: over the past three months, we had visits from 119 countries, although about 80% of our readership is American. Our editors have deep ties to the Philadelphia community. We are an international magazine, but maintain a commitment to publish about 25-30% Philadelphia-based writers in each issue.

We publish poetry, short stories, essays, flash prose, visual art, and reviews of poetry books and other small press publications. We publish quarterly, in March, June, September, and December. In each issue we present several emerging writers and at least one emerging visual artist alongside established writers and artists. We see ourselves as facilitators and stewards of the literary and artistic work that we publish.

We are independent and self-funded and are grateful for support, in part, from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and Kelly Writers House.



I cede the stage....

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Talking Clay, Talking Life, in Today's Inquirer

My Inquirer story about the life lessons learned through clay and among real artists can be found here.

Outtakes featured above: a recent release from the kiln (a gift, shhhhhh, in celebration of the forthcoming launch of Going Over) and a photograph taken in the Wayne Art Center's lobby, where the work of the extraordinary young glass artist Madeline Rile Smith (daughter of my good friend Karen Rile, about whom I once wrote here) is currently being featured.

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elements of a perfect day:

* All 72 Friday emails answered by 7:23 AM Saturday morning

* A definite "we're going" to the Annual Philadelphia Writers Party, concocted by Stephen Fried and Diane Ayres and populated by Philly writers, editors, photographers, designers "and others who eke out a living in the world of words and images or the teaching thereof." Do you see yourself in that description? Join us on Monday at Bliss, starting at 5:30 PM.

* Body Combat with Teresa at Club La Maison at 8:00 AM (we killed it)

* Clean house by 10:18 AM

* Hair by Cole Wellness, done by noon

* Andra Bell is in the house by 12:30, and off we (my husband with us) go, to see "Philomena," which is to say Judi Dench in all her glory, at Bryn Mawr Film Institute. 

* A quick trip to the Wayne Art Center, with Andra, to share with her that glorious space and its two new exhibits. One of the exhibits features the award-winning glass work of Madeline Rile, a sensational artist and the second daughter of my good friend, Karen Rile. Madeline, when we were there, three patrons were exulting in your talents. I boasted about knowing you. It's gorgeous work! Congratulations!

* My two glaze pieces are ready at the Center, and I'm happy with them. (That doesn't often happen.) And I've got a bisque piece to paint as well.

* Home to an email from The Great Jen Doll, whose first book, a memoir called Save the Date, has a smashing cover and is set for a May release. We. Can't. Wait. To. Read. I called it first.

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what happens when a former student reviews your book about memoir making

A few moments ago, a link was posted on Facebook. One click, and I was reading a review of Handling the Truth, written by my former student Stephanie Trott. Stephanie had come into my classroom fully formed, best as I could tell. A Bryn Mawr senior who'd already worked in Manhattan publishing and was crafting perfect sentences, Stephanie made the trek each Tuesday, and made us all better people for her presence. We have stayed in touch since, Stephanie and I. Postcards arrive. Emails. Funny and alluring updates from her travels around the world, for Stephanie has a truly interesting job which I suspect she will tell you about in some book, some day. She's destined.

So it made me teary eyed—that's what happened—to read her words about Handling the Truth in Cleaver Magazine, a stellar and well-reviewed literary magazine that was created by my friend, Karen Rile, and her daughter, Lauren. Karen teaches with me at Penn. She's been there far longer than I have, has taught far more classes, is widely known and loved, and deservedly won a new teaching award a year ago. Karen has been my guide to many things at Penn—me the spring-semester adjunct, and she the every-semester teaching goddess. And what a magazine she has built. What content, and what a following.

How beautiful then, to be able to thank them both, in this single post. And to do that on a day when I'm writing about my love for Penn and that riverway, Locust Walk, in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. It all circles back.

Stephanie's review begins like this, below, and can be read in its entirety at Cleaver Magazine, here.

It is a rainy Tuesday in January and I lace up the new cherry-red boots before heading out the door of my warm little warren. Through the stone-laden campus, across the slippery streets of town, and onto the train that will take me into the city. I am in my final semester as an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College and I still have not learned to buy shoes that fit my feet — I dig into the walk through West Philadelphia, burdening myself with blisters that will not heal until the first flowers have shed their petals to spring. Stumbling onto the porch of the old Victorian manor, I step into the most challenging, inspiring, and rewarding fourteen weeks I’ve yet experienced: I step into Beth Kephart’s Creative Non-Fiction class.

Flash forward one and a half years later and I am standing on the back steps of my first apartment, wearing shoes that (finally) fit and hooting jubilantly at the tiny brown box in front of me. I hug the cardboard to myself as though I could absorb the details of its journey osmotically and greet it with as much euphoria as though it were a friend returning from a far off journey. But I suppose that’s exactly what Beth Kephart’s Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir is: stories of both the familiar and strange, a chance to learn through another’s experiences, and an invitation to have our own unique adventures while meditating on the specialness of times we have already put to rest.

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Grateful for this Dr. Radway review in Cleaver Magazine

So very grateful to Cleaver Magazine and Michelle Fost for this beautiful review of Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. It means the world to me that you took notice of a book I loved writing so very much.

I quote the final paragraph here, but please do read the whole. And then take some time to leaf through Cleaver, one of the most exciting new additions to the literary scene in a very long time.

Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent includes illustrations by William Sulit, Kephart’s husband, that are a great addition. The novel’s target audience is young adult (I can imagine it being read in a classroom) but is enjoyable for older readers also. William buys the potion of the novel’s title, one of several such colorfully named elixirs he sees advertised in the Ledger. It’s a sham that might work its magic for William simply because of the strength of his desire. He wants, most of all, for it to help his mother. I liked the pile up of historical artifacts and scenes, I liked the sounds of the names of things Kephart brought into her story—“the flangers, fitters, riveters, carters, chippers, caulkers coming in” and so on—that give this story that begins in a hard scrabble moment in a boy’s life in old Bush Hill a feeling of abundance.

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I can't show you my students, but I can show you/tell you this

They have huge hearts and great talent. They make me laugh and they work hard. They pay attention to one another. They let the learning in.

Today they surprised me with a birthday celebration and magnificent card (you guys!) and made me cry (again). Forever and ever, 135.302. Forever and ever and ever.

Thank you, my students, and thank you dear provocateuring friends Karen Rile and Jamie-Lee Josselyn. And thank you Trey Popp and Maggie Ercolani and Nabil Mehta, who joined us in our final hour and made the party finer.

I will sleep well tonight.

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Announcing Cleaver Magazine, Issue No. 1: Literature, Art, & Some Chickens

Not long ago you heard me boasting here about my dear friend Karen Rile, uber Penn prof (check out this article in the Pennsylvania Gazette on a recent award Karen deservedly won and what she did with that honor) and (with her daughter Lauren) lit magazine maker.

Today, I'm again privileged to share the news that the first true issue of the magazine has been launched (the last issue was the meta issue, or the half issue, or the .5). It's called Issue No. 1. It features some astonishing work by talents new and established, and it's worth every second you will now spend reading it.

I insist. You will stop now and you will read it.

There are, I warn you, chickens afoot. But I had nothing to do with that. Almost nothing to do with that.

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Swimming Home/Deborah Levy: Reflections

I consider it a triumph every time I snare a sensational book and actually read it.

So consider me triumphed again—discovering Swimming Home by Deborah Levy in Philadelphia's Thirtieth Street Station bookstore (a tiny clutch of a space that has yet to fail my good-book greed) and reading it on the way to Penn and back, then in a fold of early morning hours.

This is the kind of book my friend Karen Rile will be able to explain to me, in full, when she reads it (she has ordered herself a copy). This is the kind of book I love—dangerously intelligent, smashed and dared, big themes on a small stage, more revealed by the brave elisions and planted repetitions, the near repetitions, than most authors can disclose declaratively. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker last year, but that's not why I bought it. I bought it because I stood in that bookstore at just past six in the morning, flipped through, and found lines like this:

Every moment with her was a kind of emergency, her words always too direct, too raw, too truthful.

And:

She was not ready to go home and start imitating someone she used to be.

And:

Her long thighs were joined to the jutting hinges of her hips like the legs of the dolls she used to bend and twist as a child.

The story is strange and seductive, its images bright.  There's the desire to read fast, to know how it all ends (for won't it end calamitously?), but you know you have to read it slow; you know you'll miss everything if you don't. It concerns two vacationing couples, an old villa in Nice, and a young woman named Kitty Finch, a naked anorectic with green painted fingernails and a hunch about nature who is desperate to have Joe, the philandering poet half of one of the couples, read a poem she wrote just for him. There is also a girl named Nina in the mix—Joe's daughter—who is trying (as the reader is trying) to make sense of the rich senselessness.

There is a mediation on the idea of et cetera. Et cetera!

All right. I'm done. Buy it. 

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Introducing Cleaver: a new literary magazine

In short: Karen Rile amazes.

In long: Karen Rile is a creative force, a tireless teacher, a super-human funny one, a jaw-dropping mom, a friend. She paved the way for me as an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania (Beth: Karen, where do you file the grades? Karen: I will call you and explain. Beth: What do you do with jubilant procrastinators? Karen: I will call you and explain. Beth: What do you do if your students don't all fit in your room? Karen: I will call you and explain.) She joins me in writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer (Karen's stuff goes viral while my stuff remains rooted in a petri dish). She had four children to my one and every single one of them is a star. She sends hysterical, private riffs regarding various Facebook commentaries that upend my dark moods of injustice. For that alone, she's priceless.

Karen Rile and me: we're friends.

When she told me that she and two of her daughters (Lauren and Pascale) were launching a new literary magazine (Cleaver: cutting-edge words), I had two thoughts:

* now Karen will never sleep, and
* this will be outstanding.

Friends, I was right. This inventive, thrilling, wow-whooping magazine has just been released in its .5 preview version and it crosses many spectra—art, poetry, fiction, essays, and the chop-chop stuff in between—while featuring my own other personal friends like Elizabeth Mosier, Lynn Levin, and Rachel Pastin. It's also beautifully designed. It's also technologically advanced. Choose your channel (HTML, Text, Mobile), sit back, and receive.

Also, judging from the fact that Karen is sending me emails at 3 AM and I am answering shortly thereafter, I was not exaggerating the no-sleep stuff.

I was lucky enough to be included in this first issue (click click). I like this, Karen wrote to me, when she received my piece. But, um, what is it, exactly?

I don't actually know. You'll have to judge for yourself. It starts like this, below, and it ends here.

I said it would be nice (look how simple I made it:  nice) not to be marooned in the blue-black of night with my thoughts, I said the corrugated squares of the downstairs quilt accuse me, I said the sofa pillows are gape-jawed, I said there are fine red hairs in the Pier 1 rug that will dislodge and drown in my lungs, I said I can’t breathe, I said, Please.

Go chill with Cleaver.

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where things begin: the Inquirer essay on Chanticleer

Several weeks ago, Avery Rome of the Philadelphia Inquirer got in touch with a question.  Would I be interested in writing in occasional pieces for the paper's Currents section?  Pieces about my intersection with my city and its fringes, perhaps.  Pieces about the people I meet or the questions I have.  Avery has been at work at the Inquirer through many seasons—vital and invigorating, disciplined and rigorous, enriching the pages with literature and poetics, even, with different and differing points of view.  If the Inquirer has gone through many phases, it has always been clear on one thing: Avery Rome is indispensable. 

Would I be interested? she'd asked.


Well, who would not be?  I'd have reason to sit and talk with Avery, for one thing, which is a pleasure every time.  And I would be joined in these pages by two incredibly special women, Karen Rile and Elizabeth Mosier.  Both are first-rate teachers and mentors—Karen at Penn and Elizabeth at Bryn Mawr College.  Both write sentences that thrill me, stories that impress. Both are mothers of children I love, children whose plays I have gone to, whose art I have worn, whose questions have made me think, whose inner beauty is as transparent as their outer gorgeousness.  And both are very essential friends.

Karen and Elizabeth's zinging essays have already appeared in the Inquirer and can be found here and here.  My piece appears today.  It was commissioned and written during the high heat of last week, before the gentling rains of this weekend.  It takes me back to Chanticleer, a garden that inspired two of my books (Ghosts in the Garden, Nothing but Ghosts) and is a source of escape, still.  The essay ends with these words and includes two of my photographs of small, sacred places at this gorgeous pleasure garden:

In the high heat of this summer I find myself again returning to Chanticleer — walking the garden alone or with friends. The sunflowers, gladiola, and hollyhocks are tall in the cutting garden. The water cascades (a clean sheet of cool) over the stone faces of the ruins and sits in a black hush in the sarcophagus. Bursts of color illuminate the dark shade of the Asian Woods. The creek runs thin but determined.

I don't know why I am forever surprised by all this. I don't know how it is that a garden I know so well — its hills, its people, its tendencies, its blocks of shade — continues to startle me, to teach me, to remind me about the sweet, cheap thrill of unbusyness, say, or the impossibility of perfect control. We do not commandeer nature — gardeners know this best of all. We are born of it, live with it, are destined for return.

Dust to dust, yes. But why not shade and blooms in between? Why not gardens in this summer of infernal, angry heat?

Wishing us all more rain, less heat, and the goodness of editors who love words, gardens that still grow, friendships that nurture, and children who move us on this Sunday morning.

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Peregrine magazine: standing among giants (and friends)

"You stand among giants," I could often be heard telling my students this semester, and there wasn't a speck of exaggeration in the claim.  For I had a class—oh, I had a class—and they taught me and one another.

It is perhaps fitting, then, that this past Tuesday, Peregrine, the Creative Writing Program magazine of the University of Pennsylvania, began to make its way into mailboxes and classrooms. It's the fourth issue of this beautiful publication, and all credit goes to the great poet, teacher, and CWP director Gregory Djanikian, who quietly sifts and mingles the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry of faculty, students, and alumni to bring this book to life.

I am so honored to be included in this magazine, and I am so touched to find myself here among the likes of C.K. Williams and Charles Bernstein, Alicia Oltuski and Rick Nichols, and my dear friends Karen Rile, Alice Elliott Dark, and Kate Northrop.  I've set this afternoon aside to read.  It will be time extremely well spent.

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The Pennsylvania Gazette Feature/Dangerous Neighbors Excerpt

The University of Pennsylvania has been extraordinarily good to me—inviting me to contribute to the pages of The Pennsylvania Gazette and Peregrine; trusting me to teach a small class of brilliant undergrads; putting me at the helm of an online book group; asking me to read with Alice Elliott Dark, or to sit on panels with Buzz Bissinger, or to join David Remnick for a Kelly Writers House dinner; and to come to know, even better, the likes of fellow teachers Jay Kirk and Karen Rile. 

Earlier this summer, John Prendergast, the editor of The Pennsylvania Gazette, wrote to say that he'd read Dangerous Neighbors and that he looked forward to having a conversation.  We had that conversation on a sunny day sitting on a row of skinny benches while a tennis match played out before us.  I was my breathless, enthused, and sleep-starved self (as you'll read) and John was the thoughtful man he is.  Several weeks later, the photographer Chris Crisman and his team met me at Memorial Hall and put up with me long enough to take my picture.

It is a generous story, accompanied by one of my favorite scenes from the book.  It will always be cherished.  And Chris, thanks for pulling your camera lens back.  You know what that means to me.

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On Editing Down

It was a quite wonderful week of conversations with students. The high school crowd kept me on my toes on Monday; Karen Rile's class at Penn was hugely well-prepared to peel the layers off process, to ask difficult questions about a narrative's seeming loneliness, say, about a river's gender, about the song writing that is story writing, about the honing of a voice.

Often the conversation circled back to editing. To the hard reality (hard on me, at least) that every page I write undergoes at least two dozen drafts. I'll spend weeks on a passage that ultimately does not serve the narrative, I confessed; weeks, and that prose is set aside. I devoted five years of my life to a novel, a post-Spanish Civil War novel, to more than 80 drafts of that novel, that ultimately did not sell, and why? Because I had not found a way (no amount of editing had saved me) to make that book authentic.

It is hard, perhaps, not to look at the work we set aside as wasted effort. It is perhaps hard to imagine that we've used that time well. But all these years, all these drafts, all these stories into this grand, confusing, sometimes exhilarating, often frustrating journey I'm on, I know this: We are kindest to ourselves when we are hardest on our selves. Be ruthless. Birth a poem.

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Narrative Collage

I head to Penn today to sit in on a class taught by the very brilliant teacher and writer Karen Rile, and to talk with the students about FLOW: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILADELPHIA'S SCHUYLKILL RIVER. Karen has positioned FLOW within a course section titled Narrative Collage, and it is from Karen that I borrow this rather exquisite definition: "Narrative collage is a compilation of small, independent pieces in which the movement between sections is abrupt and apparently transitionless. While there is no linear plot, there may be dozens of plotlets. The repetition of images builds symbols and motifs. Although a collage is comprised of small narratives, its cumulative effect is more a thesis or emotional statement than a traditional story. Narrative collage is used by writers of both fiction and nonfiction."

FLOW is a river's story, told in gasps, exclamations, declarations. It is an unfurling, in which the thru-line is not plot but shifts in mood and desire, shifts in time. The making of FLOW was a liberation, a turning point in a career that had been drenched in the personal pronoun; with FLOW I discovered how rather thrilling it could be to use the "I" to speak of the not me.

I look forward to Karen's class; I always do. To the questions she and her students will ask about a book I'm still, even all these months later, trying to define for myself.

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