Poetic Analytics

Dear Michael, Last week you wrote a response to my piece “Why I’m Not On Twitter (Yet).” It was called An Open Letter to a Fellow Writer About Twitter, and it was one of the most honest and helpful letters anyone has ever written to me. Thank you. You’ve reminded me of some important truths….

Dear LucyJulie SarkissianSimon & Schuster, April 2013340 pages$25.00 Genre: literary fiction, debut. Concerning: Lucy, a young woman whose different way of seeing and behaving has compelled her image-conscious, frustrated mother, Mum mum, to abandon her on a farm. And: Samantha, a pregnant teenager on the same farm. And: Missus and Mister, their caretakers. (And later,…

When I was nine my grandparents gave me a copy of Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, and I fell in love so completely with poetry, I told everyone that when I grew up I was going to be a rich and famous poet. Then in the seventh grade I took one of those career…