Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 23
May 17, 2016
A Tonic of Curiosity
“It’s a contention of my father’s—believing as he does that those who miss the journey miss about all they’re going to get—that people become what they pay attention to. Our observations and curiosity, they make and remake us. “Maybe a tonic of curiosity would counter my numbing sense that life inevitably creeps toward the absurd.” […]
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May 10, 2016
How to Measure a Life
How to measure a life? By mistakes gathered in mounds, in hills, in mountains? By years of anxious caution? The marriage that should not have been? The son born to be the hope of the world— the hope of my world— who defeated himself at every turn, defeated me at every turn? And then—just when […]
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May 3, 2016
The Human Experience
“The way we label things is the way they will appear to us. When we label a piece of the earth ChinaorBrazilor theUnited States, it becomes an entity that carries strong emotional baggage. When we label somethinggood, we see it as good. When we label somethingbad, we see it as bad. We get so hung […]
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April 26, 2016
On Writer’s Block
I’ve never believed in writer’s block. That isn’t to say I’ve never had times when I couldn’t think of the next thing I wanted to write or those when I found myself becalmed in the midst of a project I had entered on a friendly breeze. What I haven’t believed in isn’t the reality but […]
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April 19, 2016
Beneath the Surface of Everyday
“Freshness trembles beneath the surface of Everyday, a joy perpetual to all who catch its opal lights beneath the dust of habit.” Freya Stark
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April 12, 2016
What If You Just Love to Write?
Writing is the only one of the arts I know where people tend to assume that the only reason to do it is to be a professional. If you play the piano, no one asks when you were last on a concert stage. If you paint, no one asks what galleries or museums carry your […]
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April 5, 2016
The Great Thing and the Hard Thing
“The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.” Janet Erskine Stuart
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March 29, 2016
When the Answer is “No”
I knew the call was coming. We had planned it that way, my agent, Rubin Pfeffer, and I. I’d decided it was time to get an informed answer about the marketability of the memoir I’ve been working on for the last couple of years. So I’d asked him to read what I had and give […]
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March 22, 2016
We Are the Earth
“If you will think of yourself as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth.” Joseph Campbell
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March 15, 2016
Keeping a Long Career Alive
The first time I did it, it was a challenge. I’d never thought of doing it before. In fact, when my MFA students at Vermont College of Fine Arts wanted to do it, I confess that I discouraged them. I’m talking about novels in verse, often called poetry novels. Poetry novels, I used to tell […]
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