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Author Archives: Tony Herman
“”Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape…”
I have always felt more at home with questions than with answers, and I gravitate toward poets who explore rather than explain. Mary Oliver, one of my favorites, writes in this poem, “I believe I will never quite know. Though … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged favorite poet, margin of things, Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, not knowing, questions, soul
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“We rise again in the grass. In flowers. In songs.”
Anthony Doerr believes that literary writers should “strive toward complexity, toward questions, and away from certainty, away from stereotype.” This novel, which is a page-turner, one worth getting up early to read, demonstrates that he follows his own advice. Set … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr, complexity, fear, France, Germany, haunting, invisible, literary, questions, Spirits
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“Denial was a talent she greatly admired. She could have been Gentile, except, of course, she wasn’t.”
How does a humorist write about death? This is what I wondered when I opened Delia Ephron‘s memoir, which has a piece called “Losing Nora” about her famous sister. She relies a lot on the formula that we see in … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged Delia Ephron, eulogy, formula, humor, humor and death, Memoir, sister, Sister Mother Husband Dog
1 Comment
“Skip the beginning. Start in the middle.”
What happens when a novel begins in the middle of the story? There is a certain awkwardness. You can anticipate that there will be a lot of skipping around, which requires concentration. Is it worth it? In the case of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the … Continue reading
“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”
In the tenth anniversary edition of the memoir The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr writes, “Just as the novel form once took up experiences of urban industrialized society that weren’t being addressed in sermons or epistles or epic poems, so memoir — … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged intensely personal voice, Mary Karr, Memoir, self-awareness, The Liar's Club
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“Give the buried flower a dream.”
“Danger” might not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Robert Frost. And yet, look at what he says in this article: “If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole word, then it isn’t worth anything. Young … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged dream, hope, mind is dangerous, Robert Frost, selected poetry, young poets
1 Comment
“Don’t begin with an idea: begin with the point of the pen touching paper.”
Uniquely in America, there is “a desire to understand in the heat of living,” says Natalie Goldberg in her book about the practice of writing memoir. Don’t think of memoirs as records of events. Instead, think of it as a chance to … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged confused, lonely, Memoir, Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from Far Away, quest, recommended, search for meaning
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“I am a part of all that I have met.”
This passage from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” based on the character in Homer’s Odyssey, continues: “Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades forever and ever when I move. How dull it is to pause.” Indeed! How … Continue reading
“Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows.”
The passage continues: “That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself.” This book, the autobiography of Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, reminds me of Proust. He describes … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged aubiography, controversial, Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, recommended, shadows, writing
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“Some part of art is the art of waiting”
The poet Ted Kooser — who won the Pulitzer Prize after he retired — knows something about art and waiting. However, that doesn’t mean he’s a calm poet. His poem “Memory” starts like this: “Spinning up dust and cornhusks as it crossed the … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Delights & Shadows, Memories, Pulitzer Prize, recommended poet, Ted Kooser, Waiting
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“The name of the author is the first to go, followed obediently by the title, the plot…”
The poem “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins continues: “the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged alone, Billy Collins, forgetfulness, Sailing Alone Around the Room
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