Memoir
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The Two “I”s of Memoir
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. William Wordsworth During the British literary Romantic Period (1780s-1830s), William Wordsworth offered a definition of lyric poetry that places memory at the center of the creative process. He suggests that the stuff of poems arises from a poet’s contemplation Continue reading
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What? There’s a Problem with Memoirs?
A few weeks ago, I posted “Let’s Legitimize Personal Nonfiction.” In this post, I recounted my own experience of negative attitudes toward people who write about their difficult personal experiences and called for a firm recognition that personal nonfiction can be literary, and therefore legitimate, writing. Since then, I’ve been researching to discover some of Continue reading
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Apology to Mature Women Everywhere
Several years ago, I read Abigail Thomas’s memoir Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life. A member of my writing group at the time recommended the book, explaining that Thomas offers snapshots from a life in chapters that are often less than a page long and saying that she thought I might like it. I Continue reading
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Let’s Legitimize Personal Nonfiction
Several years ago, I attended a week-long writers’ conference on a university campus during which participants were divided into workshop groups based on genre, theme, or focus. I was in the group of memoirists whose workshop was titled Writing through and about Trauma. We were eight women who had survived various kinds of childhood and Continue reading
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Why I Wanted Lucille Ball to be My Mother (Memoir)
Mike Douglas introduced his next guest. We had one of those mahogany console black and white televisions that were popular in the 1960s. It reigned as the pot-bellied god of our living room at our house in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Music played on the Mike Douglas Show as Lucille Ball walked onstage. I recognized her from Continue reading
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Telephonophobia (An Experiment in Memoir)
My thanks to Bear River Review, in which this essay was published. The sound I heard that morning was from one of those Bell telephones, still in common use in the 1970s, with a rotary dial and an actual bell with a mechanical clapper. It jangled its urgent ding-a-ling-a-ling, demanding attention. I sometimes recall one Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 