I spent most of my childhood in Jamestown, NY, and lately I’ve been thinking about one of the houses where I lived, a middling two-story on the northside. The place had its peculiarities, like the dining room’s upright piano, ramshackle and olive green, the psychedelic pinks and blues pervading my sister’s bedroom, and, off the master, the miniscule office. An enormous Ben Franklin woodstove squatted in the basement. The basement also included a bedroom—mine, a finished box surrounded by unfinished gloom: cold concrete, naked ceiling joists, small windows harboring spiders, egg sacs, and grime. I liked my room in the daytime. At night, I very much didn’t. My siblings slept upstairs. Off my little brother’s bedroom was a balcony without a railing. On a wall in his bedroom hung a painting. [Read more…] about Real Art

This time of year, I’m more of a writer than a potter. My studio’s unheated, so though I can fire pots, I can’t throw or trim them. Too cold. I do, however, dream up springtime pots during the winter months and sketch shapes, decide on glaze combinations, and research what’s going on in the world of ceramics. I also order my supplies. I used to mix my own clay and glazes but, these days, simply purchase them. The glazes arrive in powdered form and need to be mixed with water and sieved. The clay, however, is ready to go, fifty-pound boxes of fun waiting to happen, some a nubbly brown stoneware, some a buttery white. What largely accounts for the clay bodies’ contrasting textures is an ingredient called grog. [Read more…] about Fragments From a Fire

I’ve been revising a historical novel, and it’s been going okay, I guess, even though the experience is giving me the same feeling I used to have while combing my older kid’s hair—knot after knot and a burning desire to cut them all out and call it a day. The next round of revision will go faster, the one after that, faster yet, but I’m still in the plodding stage, planting seeds to justify a development in the nineteenth chapter, deepening details, improving dialogue, clarifying motivation, honing, heightening, and patching—polishing every part to a shine. Eventually, I’ll drag the comb from the scalp to the ends of the hair with nary a snag. That’s a ways off yet, but it’s my goal. Or it always has been, anyway.

Ironically, one aim of this effortful revising is to create something that possesses the quality of effortlessness. “You make it look easy,” we say admiringly to the expert, whatever the “it” may be—dancing, sculpting, guitar-playing, writing. Making something look easy is hard work. Lately, however, I’ve been wondering about this aim, questioning the supremacy of effortlessness. Could an unraveled knot benefit a work of literature? Maybe a snarl that snags could be a good thing. [Read more…] about Good-Weird

Before my grandparents moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, they lived in Coraopolis. I was very young when they lived in that Pittsburgh suburb, not even out of elementary school, but I recall a few things about their place. The property, for one. Their house, a midcentury one-story brick, stood on a piece of land that swooped in the back, and at the bottom of the hill, my grandad’s vegetable garden sprawled to the right, and neat rows of raspberry bushes marched along the left. [Read more…] about My Introduction to Aesthetics

In her stunning essay “On Excellence,” Cynthia Ozick pays tribute to her mother, a woman with a big heart and many gifts and passions. Ozick recalls how her mother used to make her laugh, for she was “so varied, like a tree on which lemons, pomegranates, and prickly pears absurdly all hang together,” and she suggests this singularly wonderful parent epitomized excellence, “insofar as excellence means ripe generosity.”

When I think of my friend Diane Gottlieb, Ozick’s definition of excellence comes to mind. Certainly, Diane is a talented writer and editor. Her flash fiction, essays, and poems have appeared in several journals, and she is the prose and nonfiction editor of Emerge Literary Journal and a reviews team member for Hippocampus Magazine. But what I admire most about Diane is her “ripe generosity.” She fosters connections in the literary community, supports others’ creative endeavors, celebrates their achievements, models kindness, care, and interest, and gives and gives and gives.

I suppose there are more patent ways to elucidate human excellence, but honestly, the older I get, the more I appreciate Ozick’s definition. In manifesting “ripe generosity,” Diane Gottlieb and others like her make the world a better place. I don’t think anything can surpass that achievement. Or can possibly matter more.

Writing can also be a giving act, and it is the editors who orchestrate this sharing. Most recently, Diane Gottlieb has edited Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness (ELJ Editions, October 2023), an anthology of short essays about the body. I have a flash in Awakenings and was given the lovely opportunity to read an advanced copy. What a remarkable compilation. I’m so touched Diane was willing to let me ask her some questions about Awakenings. Our conversation follows. [Read more…] about An Interview with Writer and Editor Diane Gottlieb

September brings schooldays, the first flush of color in the leaves, crisp apples, cool nights, and for me, at long last, a return to writing posts for my site. It’s been a while. I wish I could say visits with family and friends kept me too busy to blog, but though there was some such fun, I spent most of my summer dealing with household disasters.

Things have been falling apart around here left and right. The catalytic converter and anti-lock braking system went on my husband’s car, the dishwasher started to leak, the toilet broke, and for a completely unrelated reason and yet almost simultaneously, so did the water treatment system. We had to replace a punctured tire on the mower, a cracked tile and warped heatshield in the woodstove, and the foot unit on the elliptical. Then three weeks ago, I tripped while running, landed on my face, and snapped my brand-new glasses. Ouch. [Read more…] about Summertime Havoc

My pottery studio’s impossible to keep clean. Basically, clay’s just fancy dirt. But this summer, even if I can’t finagle spotlessness, I’m determined to organize the space. I’ve already started with my glazes. Some of the glazes I’ve unearthed I hardly remember. But they were buried for a reason. Invariably, they cost a pretty penny, were a pain to mix, and, when tested, proved disappointing. The walnut glaze, for instance. I vaguely recall it fired to a hue less nutty and more brownish blah.
[Read more…] about To Assemble a Shimmer

The daffodils are in bloom, filling the flowerbeds and meadow and trimming the woods, like bonnets of pure sunshine. Such cheerful flowers. I love spring!

I started growing daffodils shortly after my husband and I first moved here, almost twenty years ago. I was a young teacher at the time, and Jolene, one of my eleventh-grade students, came by to help me with the planting. A heavy mist hung in the air, as we dug holes and plopped in bulbs, hundreds and hundreds of them. [Read more…] about Daffodil Season

I spent a good chunk of the 1980s listening to Prince, Madonna, and Duran Duran, puffing up my bangs, feathering the sides of my hair, crushing on Tommy Howell, wearing leg warmers, reading Sweet Valley High books, and watching certain films—Flashdance, The Pirate Movie, Airplane!—over and over again. Omnipresent in my tween years was something else, not so much a sight as a collection of distinct scents, the clean note of lavender, the heady sweetness of rose, the spiciness of pine, orange peel, cinnamon sticks, and cloves: potpourri!

Potpourri had a moment in the ‘80s. You couldn’t walk through a living room without bumping into shriveled petals and crispy buds. Across the nation, bowls of dead flowers breathed scents over sofas and coffee tables, and when the potpourri snuck into sachets, those perfumes permeated our underwear drawers.
[Read more…] about Dead Flowers

Some time ago, I read a review of Emilio Salgari’s Captain Storm, and the reviewer, novelist Gustavo Martín Garzo, had many nice things to say about this classic adventure tale, including how this book taught him “that in literature there should always be a secret story behind the more obvious one, and that as you read, the other story unravels.” This observation intrigued me, and now, whenever I read a great work of fiction, I reflect on Garzo’s words and search behind the apparent narrative for something elusive, connected, but gradually disentangling: the secret story. [Read more…] about The Secret Story