Tag: mental illness
-
A Weaponry of Journals
I’m dipping into my journals in order to write about writing, looking for the notes on old manuscripts to see what tricks of the trade I’ve used through the years. It’s an interesting journey, to read what you wrote twenty-five, thirty years ago. It’s not always pretty; a journal is the place we turn to,…
-
Madness, Poetry, and Choosing Not to Die
Robert Lowell wrote those two lines in his poem “Night Sweats.” It’s one of my faves (the full poem is below). It’s a love poem, about a man who suffers mental illness, and his wife, who keeps him alive. It’s a brutal poem. Lowell suffered from manic depression. These days, people say “manic depression,” and…
-
Our Demons and Our Words
1. Poetry born out of horror has a rough go of it. Some of the things we do to one another are so damaging, it’s near-impossible to wrap words around them. Yet, poets try, and sometimes they even succeed. But behind one poem that works, there might be a couple dozen that failed. Sometimes I…
-
Careful, who you read your journal to…
In the middle of writing the first notes for the novel The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, I recorded the above dream. My son Ben had been born two months previous. He was our last of four children, and my mind had focused on that—the youngest. There was a brittle feeling about it, though…
-
The First Journal
Her name was Nancy. She was beautiful. Light auburn hair, slim build, hazel eyes and a smile, oh that smile. She was new to Knoxville Catholic High School, somewhere from the north. Her family had moved to Tennessee that summer, so she didn’t have our accent. She came to us in her senior year. All…