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128 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 18, 2010
I write to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.While I wouldn't say I disagree with this sentiment -- those are valid reasons to write and things I'm sure most writers get out of the process -- it does not speak to me. It is not why I write and does not typify the sort of things I prefer to read. Which is probably why neither Didion nor MacLachlan are favorites of mine. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think they are bad writers, they're just not to my taste. They exemplify an approach to writing, as illustrated by the above quote and by this book as a whole, that focuses on personal feelings and the expression of interior experience. This seems to be the sort of writing that most schools encourage in our post-hippie touchy-feely education era, and it produces writing exactly like the poems MacLachlan includes here; really, despite having pretty much all the same voice (one of my complaints about this book) the poems reminded me amazingly of the stuff we were made to write when I was in school. And you know, I thought it was boring and fake then, too.