I’d love to see you in one (or both!) of our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops this coming week: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll down for all the details.
I read it in one sitting, my daughter said about a book. Here, you can have it. I too read it in one sitting and texted her this photo. What did you think? she asked, and I sensed her trepidation – what if I hadn’t liked it?
Broke my heart, I wrote. So beautiful and so painful.
I sensed her relief through the ether. The things and places and people we love can be hard to share, because what if others don’t feel the same way? This is why I can’t be in a book club, and why I usually don’t tell people my favorite movie because it’s often scorned. It hurts to think how I must have hurt people in my life by unknowingly scoffing at the things they hold dear.
Forgive Me John Keats, by Joyce Sutphen
The day we read your “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
I wasn’t able to make them see it.
I couldn’t get them to hear your voice, to
imagine you standing in a bare room,
slowly circling the urn, noticing
the lovers and the piper and the town,
and how it occurred to you that not one
detail would change; no one would ever grow
old there, the leaves would never fall. I tried
to get them to think about Art and Life–
how one is long and the other is short,
how death may be the mother of beauty.
But forgive me John Keats, I failed to let
them see your hand (still warm) held out to us.
Click here for more information about the wondrous poet Joyce Sutphen.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter
Alison McGhee 
Love, love, love Claire Keegan. Just finished “So Late In The Day” a couple weeks ago. Has more of an “edge”( for lack of a better word) than “Small Things Like These” and “Foster” but the usual astonishing writing. Irish actor Cillian Murphy is apparently going to be starring in the film version of “Small Things Like These”. Emily Watson is in too, I think.
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Now that’s a movie I’ll line up to see. 🙂
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Love, love, Love Claire Keegan. Just finished “So Late In The Day” a couple weeks ago. Astonishing writer.
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I completely agree. She’s incredible.
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How I remember my brief days as an English teacher trying to get kids, seniors in high school, all primed to GO, to appreciate ideas and hearts so deeply invested in words. I failed nearly every time.
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It hurts. It just hurts. I hear you, my dear friend.
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Sorry, I always read your posts and the poems you gift to us, but had to respond to your message about Small Things Like These. I read it this week and told my son over the phone today he was going to get a copy. Such a beautiful book. Also very beautiful to talk about and share books with one’s children.
Thanks for your messages. Barbara
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Dear Barbara, this is such a lovely comment. And such synergy with books and children who read them. (And I’m so glad you like the poems.)
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