God I am so deeply grateful someone saw fit to put a heart like yours in the soul of a writer.
You give grief and its disciples (which is all of us sooner or later) permission to honor out loud what hurts us, and to do so as deeply and for as long as we loved what we love. Longer even.
What more is there that really makes up who we are at our core?
Cannot wait for your book. No pressure but hurry. 🙏🏼❤️
Delighted that you mentioned Birkerts' work. He's one of my three mentors, recently "christening" my latest essay, "Mother's Elegy" ready to shop literary journals. I only had the courage to send to one, the lesser known "Salt Hill Journal" out of Syracuse University, my old stomping grounds. Unlike your students, I've been around long enough to know that publishing is a crap shoot, and no, those young readers don't always feel compelled to respond whether they accept our work or reject it. Sometimes I cheer at receiving a form note scratched on a quarter piece of torn typing paper. That's something.
Second, Alice Mattison is another mentor and years long dearest friend. This month letters between Alice and Jane Kenyon were published. As you can imagine, there's a lot of Donald Hall flowing through those letters as Jane and he were married. I recommend "What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison." University of Michigan Press, where Hall and Kenyon met. It's a hefty book - 500 pages almost exactly. They begin at the beginning of their friendship and end at Jane's death from acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 1995. There's a lot of joy and a lot of pain in those pages, a lot of conflict and a lot of confusion, sometimes rage, which is the truth of every intimate friendship. There's also a different take - Jane's take - on her marriage. Not so perfect as Don's portrayal. Please do pick it up. [I sometimes have a side gig as publicist.]
I like this. I like all of it. It's not that I am so important, but my Grandmothers played a huge part in my life. My Father's Mother lived to 103 and she push-mowered her lawn- well into her 90s. The last I saw her in the yard, at about 100, my Dad was mowing the grass and Grandmother was sitting on the walkway to her porch with a hatchet. She would chop/ edge the walk within reach, then scoot on her butt back a few feet and go again.
My Mother's Mother proudly would say her Grandmother was full blooded Cherokee.
When I first went to live with her she was in shock that I didn't know the names of the trees and bushes all around me. She was my savior.
I grew up in a vastly different culture, in the backwoods of South Alabama. She accepted me and fostered me in the hippy days of my youth. In South Alabama long hair could get you killed, or stomped badly. But your New York/ Metropolis upbringing is foreign to me, though I enjoy reading it - many of the urban actions you write about I learn of for the first time.
I'm 71 now and love baseball. It helps me kill 3 hours a day
Soylent Green, a film I saw with my older first husband when I was a few years transitioned out of foster care. This past few years I have thought so often of that film. And of my own cycle of time on this precious earth. Thank you for this.
Well, this sure resonated with me, given that the two oldest members of my book group died this week. Diana, who was 90 or 92, died on Monday. Frances, who was 95, died yesterday. Frances was my mother's contemporary, but as I wrote in my Substack today, in the realm of motherhood, she was mine: 29 years ago, when she was 66, a year older than I am now, France's only child, a son, returned home from Cambodia with his four-year-old daughter, whose mother was too ill to care for her. At an age when women tend to become grandmothers, Frances became a mother to a child who spoke no English. (And Frances spoke no Cambodian.) France's son traveled frequently for work, so Frances basically raised her granddaughter. She was three years younger than my mother, but she remained healthy for far longer. I believed that her granddaughter kept her young, something I thought I told myself to make myself feel better. But my husband, a biochemist, said there really is something to environmental determinants of health. Note to self: make a lot of younger friends. (Another reason this essay resonated: when I was a baby reporter at the Concord Monitor in NH in 1983 or 1984, I spent an afternoon with Donald Hall. I was too ignorant to be intimidated, and he was too kind to intimidate me.) (I need to go find that article...)
I also see nothing wrong with coiling around your grief like a snake. What a tender, fierce way to hold it. I cannot wait for your new book. I'm listening to Permission right now while I polish kitchen sinks and scrub waterstains off shower glass, scribbling notes on post it notes as inspiration strikes, or when something you say grips me by the heart, so I can only imagine how this new flood of grace will be a thing to coil around as well. Thank you, Elissa.
This was such a poignant beautiful read that brought sighs, smiles and tears of recognition ~ you have my gratitude for putting the words together & down in writing...and for sharing them 🙏🏼
God I am so deeply grateful someone saw fit to put a heart like yours in the soul of a writer.
You give grief and its disciples (which is all of us sooner or later) permission to honor out loud what hurts us, and to do so as deeply and for as long as we loved what we love. Longer even.
What more is there that really makes up who we are at our core?
Cannot wait for your book. No pressure but hurry. 🙏🏼❤️
One of your most gorgeous pieces to date and one which I will return to time and again. Thank you for sharing such aching and beautiful memories.
Grief metabolized into the fabric of our lives. That idea will stay with me.
Thank you -
Delighted that you mentioned Birkerts' work. He's one of my three mentors, recently "christening" my latest essay, "Mother's Elegy" ready to shop literary journals. I only had the courage to send to one, the lesser known "Salt Hill Journal" out of Syracuse University, my old stomping grounds. Unlike your students, I've been around long enough to know that publishing is a crap shoot, and no, those young readers don't always feel compelled to respond whether they accept our work or reject it. Sometimes I cheer at receiving a form note scratched on a quarter piece of torn typing paper. That's something.
Second, Alice Mattison is another mentor and years long dearest friend. This month letters between Alice and Jane Kenyon were published. As you can imagine, there's a lot of Donald Hall flowing through those letters as Jane and he were married. I recommend "What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison." University of Michigan Press, where Hall and Kenyon met. It's a hefty book - 500 pages almost exactly. They begin at the beginning of their friendship and end at Jane's death from acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 1995. There's a lot of joy and a lot of pain in those pages, a lot of conflict and a lot of confusion, sometimes rage, which is the truth of every intimate friendship. There's also a different take - Jane's take - on her marriage. Not so perfect as Don's portrayal. Please do pick it up. [I sometimes have a side gig as publicist.]
I like this. I like all of it. It's not that I am so important, but my Grandmothers played a huge part in my life. My Father's Mother lived to 103 and she push-mowered her lawn- well into her 90s. The last I saw her in the yard, at about 100, my Dad was mowing the grass and Grandmother was sitting on the walkway to her porch with a hatchet. She would chop/ edge the walk within reach, then scoot on her butt back a few feet and go again.
My Mother's Mother proudly would say her Grandmother was full blooded Cherokee.
When I first went to live with her she was in shock that I didn't know the names of the trees and bushes all around me. She was my savior.
I grew up in a vastly different culture, in the backwoods of South Alabama. She accepted me and fostered me in the hippy days of my youth. In South Alabama long hair could get you killed, or stomped badly. But your New York/ Metropolis upbringing is foreign to me, though I enjoy reading it - many of the urban actions you write about I learn of for the first time.
I'm 71 now and love baseball. It helps me kill 3 hours a day
Your baseball loving friend
Thanks, John -
Your writing is incendiary.
Thank you -
Beautiful writing as always, Elissa. I just turned 70 and I’m right there with you. I think we’re the “young old” now. Thank you for this piece.
Soylent Green, a film I saw with my older first husband when I was a few years transitioned out of foster care. This past few years I have thought so often of that film. And of my own cycle of time on this precious earth. Thank you for this.
Well, this sure resonated with me, given that the two oldest members of my book group died this week. Diana, who was 90 or 92, died on Monday. Frances, who was 95, died yesterday. Frances was my mother's contemporary, but as I wrote in my Substack today, in the realm of motherhood, she was mine: 29 years ago, when she was 66, a year older than I am now, France's only child, a son, returned home from Cambodia with his four-year-old daughter, whose mother was too ill to care for her. At an age when women tend to become grandmothers, Frances became a mother to a child who spoke no English. (And Frances spoke no Cambodian.) France's son traveled frequently for work, so Frances basically raised her granddaughter. She was three years younger than my mother, but she remained healthy for far longer. I believed that her granddaughter kept her young, something I thought I told myself to make myself feel better. But my husband, a biochemist, said there really is something to environmental determinants of health. Note to self: make a lot of younger friends. (Another reason this essay resonated: when I was a baby reporter at the Concord Monitor in NH in 1983 or 1984, I spent an afternoon with Donald Hall. I was too ignorant to be intimidated, and he was too kind to intimidate me.) (I need to go find that article...)
I also see nothing wrong with coiling around your grief like a snake. What a tender, fierce way to hold it. I cannot wait for your new book. I'm listening to Permission right now while I polish kitchen sinks and scrub waterstains off shower glass, scribbling notes on post it notes as inspiration strikes, or when something you say grips me by the heart, so I can only imagine how this new flood of grace will be a thing to coil around as well. Thank you, Elissa.
This was such a poignant beautiful read that brought sighs, smiles and tears of recognition ~ you have my gratitude for putting the words together & down in writing...and for sharing them 🙏🏼