Clayre Benzadón

This is Why I write (I’m sorry for stealing from you, Paramore). Have you ever had the urge to bungee jump beneath stalactites and mine...

Nov 29, 20232 min read

Dara Barrois/Dixon (2008)

I write to keep mortality in check. I write because all the poets before us wrote and lent us their genius and showed us ways to write...

Nov 5, 20231 min read

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WRITERS RESPOND

Clayre Benzadón

This is Why I write (I’m sorry for stealing from you, Paramore). Have you ever had the urge to bungee jump beneath stalactites and mine...

Nov 29, 20232 min read

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Paul Hlava Ceballos

Why I Write There is something inscrutable about poetry for me, even though I am a poet, or maybe especially because I am a poet....

Nov 11, 20233 min read

37 views

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Maureen Seaton

Why I Write for Denise I write to hear my thoughts beneath the world’s thoughts. I write because Austen, because Morrison, because García...

Nov 10, 20231 min read

41 views

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Arisa White (2009)

I write because I'm trying to love others and myself. It is a way of getting to. It's an opportunity to try on humanity, from varying...

Nov 8, 20232 min read

13 views

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Mark Wunderlich (2009)

I learned to read when I was four and soon discovered the set of books on a small shelf in my room; I would spend much time reading and...

Nov 8, 20234 min read

9 views

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Andrew Demčák (2009)

As Joan Didion says “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying: listen to me, see it...

Nov 8, 20231 min read

4 views

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Alan Shapiro (2009)

**Essay provided by author; however, it originally published in the Cincinnati Review and reprinted in Best American Essays 2007 .** ...

Nov 8, 202319 min read

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ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dustin Brookshire is the author of the chapbooks Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Along with Julie E. Bloemeke, he is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). Find Dustin online at dustinbrookshire.com.

WHY I WRITE
PICK OF THE MONTH

“Recalling at moments the philosophical comedy of Wallace Stevens and Wislawa Szymborska, many of Wier’s colloquial stanzas draw a reader away from a recognizable world into one in which women waltz with bears, houseflies chat with colonels, and the absence of sound makes a material presence.”

—Harvard Review