Karen Joy Fowler

A Gathering of Particulars: On Building a Word-Hoard
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A Gathering of Particulars: On Building a Word-Hoard

It is fitting that the bowerbird roosts in the opening lines of Ted Hughes’s poem “A Literary Life,” for there is perhaps no better mascot for reader and writer both. The species is a known collector, spending the better part of the year building complicated huts from assorted novelties: colored glass and aluminum tabs, bleached…