I just read Gina Barreca’s post, Everything You Lose Makes Room for Something New and it reminded me of two things. One, a vilanelle by Elizabeth Bishop that I have a love-hate relationship with called ‘One Art’. Although it’s ‘about’ the death of her partner, my favorite lines are:

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

The whole poem is here.

The second thing this post reminds me of is my own just-so postcard that Shanti sent me from Geneva when I was studying in Lahore. The quote, from Jules Renard, reads:

Ecrire, c’est une façon de parler sans être interrompu.

San Diego State University has an article by Kurt Vonnegut up titled ‘How to Write with Style’. It’s simple, straightforward and really quite a good example of what he’s talking about. His most important piece of advice? Sound like yourself. Which, incidentally, is something people like Penni and Jen and some of the other amazing writers I’ve met through the Creative Writing program seem to do consistently.