“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.”
– John Keats
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
– Emily Dickinson
Cloudy day, and I’m ruminating on “the realms of gold.” I think of Pat Conroy’s letter to the Gazette about book banning. I’d recommend everyone read that letter in praise of English teachers.
***
… I see award-winning author Brenda Miller is at WVU this 
week to take part in a writer-in-residence workshop. Her debut book, “Season of the Body,” is an autobiography in essay form that takes us to places like Portugal and Utah, to explore not Portugal and Utah, but the deep caves of our hearts. The essay “Needlepoint,” for example, centers on her experience with a miscarriage. Poetry itself adds color to Miller’s voice in that essay. I want to read another essay, and another.
Miller is also the co-author of “Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction.”
… After all that, my mind zooms over to Emily Dickinson’s poem “There is no frigate like a book”:
THERE is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
… Reminds me of Bill Knott’s wry line, the tiny poem “Wrong” in his book “The Unsubscriber”:
“I wish to be misunderstood, / that is, / to be understood from your perspective.”
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