For years, my favorite poet has been Billy Collins. I’ve shared his poetry before on this blog. As I’ve helped Lucy write her blog, we’ve warmed up our writing minds with poems from Billy. He helps me engage my heart in a way that isn’t too sentimental or affected. Anyway, today I came across this old poem called Purity and it’s one of my favorites. It’s great advice for writers, too. It’s about coming to the typewriter completely vulnerable. And not fake vulnerability like the hacks, the guys who talk about how bad they feel about how many women they’ve slept with (a sly way of bragging about sexual prowess) or about how humbled they are for having won the prestigious blogger of the week award from the local quilting circle (are you really humbled by that? You know you like those old ladies swooning over you) but the real thing, the vulnerability that costs you, that can even shrink your readership. I had lunch with a friend last week that had quit drinking. He’s an artist, a writer, and I asked about his career. He’d just released a new project. He told me he was so busy trying not [...]
