Poets & Writers – September 2019

Note

EDITOR’S

SEPT OCT 2019 8

New England College

MFA in Creative Writing

Low-residency

Low Faculty-to-Student Ratio

Teaching Assistantships

FACULTY

PAIGE ACKERSON-KIELY

JENSEN BEACH

SARAH MANGUSO

JENNIFER MILITELLO

ANDREW MORGAN

DAVID RYAN

ALLISON TITUS

RECENT VISITING WRITERS

ALYSIA ABBOTT

LILLIAN-YVONNE BERTRAM

ANDRE DUBUS III

New England College

Fiction,

Poetry,

Nonfiction,

anDual-Genre.^

d

98 Bridge Street

Henniker, NH 03242

603.428.

[email protected]

necmfa.com

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

I WA S S U P P O S E D T O B E WR I T I N G. P U T T H A T O N MY H E A D S T O N E.

There was this editor’s note, my remarks for an upcoming Poets &

Writers Live event, thoughtful replies to the 117 e-mails I received

a day earlier, a chapter about working with editors for the book

my wife and I are writing together, the letter of recommendation

for a former colleague, and more—so of course I was fixing my

porch. In my defense, the porch project had already been on hold

for six months because of inclement weather (which is both a

meteorological reference and an indication of my state of mind

during the long winter), and to say that the wood at the corner of

my porch was unsightly—exposed to the elements, as it was, for

more than a hundred wet seasons—would be an understatement.

So r at her t ha n do what I wa s s upposed to be doi ng, I wa s t r y i ng to

figure out the compound cuts (the bevel cuts and miter cuts that

result in a perfect angled square) that I’d need to execute to fashion

new wood trim around a century-old square column. Eventually I

figured it out, or close enough anyway, and a day and a half later,

I had a solid, freshly painted corner on my porch.

And no words on the page.

To be clear, my kind of woodworking is not what Téa Obreht

describes in “A Gift” (page 56). The novelist says she has been learn-

ing joinery, which is something more precise and, from the sound

of it, more satisfying than what I did to my porch. “It’s essentially

woodwork i ng, where you’re fit t i ng piece s of wood toget her to m a ke

something more complex,” she tells Amy Gall. “I’m an absolute

beginner and expect everything I make to give way any second;

but I derive a lot of satisfaction from being able to tangibly measure

progress in the discipline. When you write for two hours, you can

somehow inexplicably end up with fewer words than you started

with; but if you saw a piece of wood in half, you will have two pieces

of wood ever y time.” We can all relate to that feeling of tak ing t wo

steps back for every one step forward, but for writers that’s called

progress. As essayist Aaron Gilbreath recently wrote on Facebook

(I know, I was supposed to be writing), “Sometimes you have to

write 20,000 words...to get to the right 5,000.”

Obreht says somet hing else t hat rings t r ue— so t r ue we put it on

the cover: “A good writing day will end with the desire to keep writ-

ing.” If any day, no matter how you spend it, ends this way—with

the promise of more writing—I think we can count it as a good one.

A GOOD DAY