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missing her

Marika getting some love.

Today I saw a Vizsla tearing around a field, in search of whatever ecstasy of smells she was discovering, and I was reminded of my beloved Marika. 

 

Without Dog

 

She won't eat,

drinks only small

sips from the bowl I hold

oiut to her.

 

Please, I say, please.

She attends earnestly,

panting, watching the air.

 

~

 

I learn to stick the neeedle

quickly. I learn

to do it in the dark.

 

One hand holds an IV bag

high, for pressure,

the other slips the needle in.

 

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writing: is the personal political?

Grandchildren in the sweaters I knit

Since Election Day, or really, the morning after the election, when I woke up to a new reality, I have had a difficult time settling down to write. Partly this is due to the agitation I feel, a generalized sense that bad things are happening. That worse things will happen. This fear fuels my knitting, which calms me with simple, repetitive motions, and my cooking, which has its own dance of repetitive motions and at the same time fills the house with the comforting smells of onions caramelizing on the stove, squash cooking in the oven. My grandchildren have benefited with a slew of new sweaters, my husband has been served an array of new meals, and I have generally kept myself sane. But I have not been writing.

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getting to new work

Monday morning desk
So here it is, Monday morning. Not just any Monday morning, the first Monday morning of a new year. A perfect time to sit down to a new writing project. Yes?

Well, maybe.

I took the last week off, catching up on movies and books, indulging in some wonderful meals, here and elsewhere, enjoying  Read More 
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Without internet

No internet!

I thought I'd be fine without internet. Aren't I self-sufficient? Someone who loves to read, write, take long walks, someone who can spend hours sitting and staring out the window? No internet would be a boon. More time for the things I loved.

I knew that this image of myself might be slightly skewed

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Am I a Jewish Writer?

Writing

Here's my interview with Jody Carr for her series of Jewish writers interviews, published on Carr Talks.

If you hadn’t been a writer, what would you have been?

At one point I took my law boards and applied to law school. It’s strange to think

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Tomatoes and the Writing Habit

From the garden...

I know how I should be writing: each day, day after day, so the words accumulate at a steady pace, so my writing mind gets into a groove. For years at a stretch, when my kids were little, I wrote every morning from the moment they went off to school till the minute they

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What I Read--and Didn't Write--This Summer

Reading
 

Summer. With time to read. And time to write. What a relief after the busy-ness of the school year, when I'm trying to balance teaching with my own reading and writing. I had high hopes for this summer. I planned to spend uninterrupted hours reading the poetry books and journals that were piling up

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Interview on Women Writing Grief

Cowgirl and her Dad

My first post on this last day of May, here is a link is to a conversation with Patricia Caspers Rogers on the Ploughshares blog series, Women Versing Life. Like me, Tricia is a poet who writes about the death of her father. Her fine manuscript is titled Life with Fever. I enjoyed working with Tricia

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