memoir

Loving the campers was the given. We were in sync. I wasn’t, after all, that much older than they were. I could have passed for one of them, had I worn a camp uniform...

Writing about Percy is like trying to write about magic, or grace, or river waters flowing through my fingers.

The tops of the chocolate pudding have developed a rubbery layer, as they will, when they cool. That rubbery layer is my favorite part...

When I write in my journal, every morning, with coffee, sometimes the writing heats up, feels like it’s about to deliver something...

Where I go on the web to read nonfiction that expands my understanding of what essays are and what they can do.

...the progression of Lillian’s dementia is there, just outside, and I have to encounter this slow, arduous and mysterious passage. Lillian was a painter, as I am.

In her 57th post, Helena grapples first with this column’s deadline, then with a transformative experience of both grief and love.

In her 56th post, Helena shares an exercise on building characters, along with memories of her beloved sister.

In her 54th post, Helena shares some fragments of nonfiction stories from her works-in-progress binder.

The clear takeaway, the living arc of this book, is how a love of poetry and a commitment to a writing life, or any artistic life, can bind two people to one another.