How to use this Page

I don't take one darned thing for granted.

Every book is hard, and every bit of luck really is sheer luck, and goodness comes at you from unforeseen places, or a friend steps in, or something.

So I'm saying thank you today to the unforseen:

To Cleaver Magazine and Melissa Sarno, for naming One Thing Stolen to its Best of 2015: YA Staff Picks. To the Texas Library Association for slipping the book onto its 2016 TAYSHAS Reading List (among so many other powerful novels and nonfiction selections).

One Thing Stolen really was a book I hoped into being—hoped and fervently re-visioned. Then stood back and hoped some more. To all of those who read the book, encouraged the book, were there for the book, thank you. You might now know how much that matters, but it matters. Much. And so, again, I thank you Cleaver, Melissa Sarno, and the Texas Library Association.

Add a Comment

This morning, before the gears on the work-a-day-world began to turn in earnest, I read "Gabriel: A Poem," Edward Hirsch's book-length elegy for his departed son.

It is hallowed and hollowing, a work of pristine mourning. Memories seamed and broken. Threads that fall away until we see the soul of the boy himself— adopted, challenged by tics and relentless recklessness, the bright splash in a room. He is a child no one can keep safe from himself. A child who goes out during Storm Irene to a party he sees advertised on Craigslist. A child who does not return and cannot be found for four terrible days.

And then he must be buried.

It ransacks the soul, reading a book like this. We peel away as the lines peel away; no periods at the end of any line, no finished sentences. We look and we cannot stop looking until Gabriel, and his searching father, are a part of us.

It is a poem. It is also memoir. Like Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming it suggests, again, another form for the hardest and most important stories lived. The most important things lost and lifted to the page.

Words:

In his country
There were scenes
Of spectacular carnage

Hurricanes welcomed him
He adored typhoons and tornadoes
Furies unleashed

Houses lifted up
And carried to the sea
Uncontained uncontainable

Unbolt the doors
Fling open the gates
Here he comes

Chaotic wind of the gods
He was trouble
But he was our trouble

With thanks to Nathaniel Popkin, whose craft essay in Cleaver Magazine last week reminded me that I had meant to buy and read this.

Add a Comment

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, with no little help from Karen, who has encouraged, driven, photographed, packaged, and web sited up their dreams. 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.

Display Comments Add a Comment