The writers who visit you in class, when you’re still a student—especially if you’re young and impressionable—these writers stick with you for a lifetime.
I recall vividly a visit from Dana Gioia to my undergrad poetry class, then his reading afterward, and handing him a book to sign. I thought there was no person more intrinsically a writer, so thoroughly in his being and essence someone who loved words. He was nothing less than a prophet.
In her essay for Glimmer Train, Marian Palaia describes Barry Hannah, a writer who made a dramatic impression on her. She writes,
The way I saw it then and still see it today: Barry was blindly in love with everyone and everything, and words are what he loved most of all, and they are what he had with which to express his love. He didn’t hedge his bets, and the sentences he fashioned—those holy, celestial, bonkers sentences—oh my god. As Wells Tower put it after Barry died, “He wouldn’t leave a sentence alone until he’d electrified every word… After Hannah, you couldn’t let yourself write a ‘Then he picked up a coffee cup’ sort of sentence ever again.”
Read more from Palaia: Words, and Barry Hannah, the Guy Who Taught Me to Love Them.
Also in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:
- We All Do It! Don’t We? by Devin Murphy
- The Political Lives of Characters by Siamak Vossoughi
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
The is all so true, Jane. I’ve Kondoed (See “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo) a large number of books to new homes, yet my worn copy of “The Poet’s Choice: 100 American Poets’ Favorite Poems” remains “sparking joy” on my shelf. I was mesmerized by Lisel Mueller reading her wonderful work, “The Blind Leading the Blind.” I can still see her behind a podium on stage. She signed my book on that page, dated it, and noted that we met at the Indiana University Writers’ Conference in my college days (year omitted!). I’ve read so many words since then, yet also remember some of the quotes from our short stories read that year from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Oh my, thanks for bringing back good memories with your post.
I open a novel to its first page looking for the electrified sentence or phrase. If I don’t see it, I might not read on. Is that asking too much of an author? I’ve landed on Patrick DeWitt, lately. He turns me on. My wife is only happy reading Alice Munro. These authors, their love of words overflows onto us.
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