Literary touchstones from the 80s
Plus: a poem by national poet laureate, Joy Harjo
vol. 5 IKL 1
Greetings,
Over at Greg Olear’s PREVAIL, he has this wonderful thing called Sunday Pages, where he offers something uplifting or inspirational. So often, he provokes me to reconsider my literary “roots”, which much of the time I actually take for granted.
But not this past weekend. I didn’t take anything for granted. I felt a twinge of longing for something.
Greg, who once upon a time taught creative writing, gave an eloquent analysis of Tobias Wolff’s short story Bullet in the Brain, and I joined in the commentary, recalling a time Wolff was a guest lecturer in one of my classes in college, way back when. You can read more about it if you follow the thread.
Originally, I had wanted to study indigenous American history, and had actually been going nicely down that path in an American Studies program at a little school in Virginia. Then I had what used to be called a “nervous breakdown” and left school for a while.
