Mining my Memoir and Other Reliquaries

I know. I know. A memoir is not actually a storehouse for relics such as sacred bones or castoff pieces of clothing—the stuff of saints and the holiest of holies. A memoir is a container for a story from a life. And not necessarily a holy life, except for the belief that all life is holy, even that of a sinner such as me.

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Falling in Love All Over Again

A couple of Thursday Writers* ago, my co-facilitator, Steve Montgomery gave us writers this prompt: “We fell in love again.” It’s taken from a poem by Ted Kooser, the first US Poet Laureate.

The idea of Thursday Writers is to write to the prompt, writing practice style—that is, go where the prompt takes you, write for a given amount of time (in this case, thirteen minutes) and when time’s up, read your writing aloud if you want to; no critique is given.

This is what I wrote from the prompt (some light editing for grammar, punctuation, etc):

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Poetry is having its way with me

We’ve been observing National Poetry Month at Thursday Writers, a weekly drop-in writing practice group I’ve been part of since the mid-90s. The last two Thursdays, before the prompt that sparks the writing, we read a poem. Though generally writers write all over the  place—narrative prose mostly—I’m finding that reading the poems before we write seems to have an influence on the writing, at least with some of us. It certainly is having its way with me.

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