But Call Me Betsy

In this Penn grad class I"m taking, we get to write a short story and then we're going to also be writing poetry. We had our first fiction workshop this week, and it seemed clear that some of the students might be more comfortable in the poetry realm--lots of heavy imagery and repetition; stuff like :"words, words--what are words? Silent words Words as heavy as snow. Wordsmith-ing of the word in the dark scream of the throat." (Reminds me of Woody Allen's Love and Death , where the characters are parodying Russian literature... "Wheat.....wheat.....fields of wheat.....cream of wheat....."). Of course, I am terrified of poetry--I am sure most of mine will be bad. In fact, I know that I write fantastic at bad poetry. Here's a poem I wrote yesterday after eating lunch at Pod with a writer friend of mine: The dumplings sat fat and juicy Like the heart of an over weight midget Yum Maybe I will be okay if we can write narrative poetry ala Billy Colli...

Felt like that old woman in the story by Flannery O'Connor today as I browsed Circle Thrift and found myself followed by two little African-American kids--one was about three (the boy) and the other was maybe 6 (the girl). They were with their grandma and something I said to them made them think they could talk to me and then the little girl came asked me if I could help her look at some baby clothes. She said she had two dolls and wanted to buy booties for one of them. I took the box off the shelf and we went through it and she said, But I can't buy this. I only have two dollars. I said, Well, go ask your grandma if it's okay if I give you a dollar. She went over and asked the silent older woman who was browsing through the kitchen stuff and seemed utterly unconnected to the children. I didn't want to be insulting, I didn't want to be like, Oh, you poor li'l Negro chillren, here you go, here's a penny! At the same time, what's a dollar to me? So, the li...