In Praise of the Unfinished Letter
The letters I never sent taught me more about what I wanted to say than any of the ones I finished.
Essays
How the River Used to Flood Every Spring
Older residents remember the spring flood the way other people remember a relative - inconvenient, occasionally dangerous, and missed more than expected once it stopped coming.
On the Novel That Refuses to End
The novel is six hundred pages of genuine craft attached to an ending that never comes, and I am no longer sure the author thinks that is a flaw.
A Sequence for the Dry Season
Written in the driest months of the year, these poems keep circling back to the same small acts of waiting for water that never quite arrives on schedule.
The Sound a House Makes When No One Is Home
A house left alone does not go silent. It just stops performing for you, and starts making the sounds it always wanted to.
The Schoolhouse Bell, Sold at Auction
A bell that once called a whole township to school now sits in a private garden, rung twice a year, for reasons its current owner cannot quite articulate.
A Brief Taxonomy of Doorbells
Long before you open the door, the doorbell has already told you who is likely on the other side of it.
Talking Shop with a Typesetter in the Age of Screens
He sets type by hand for a readership that mostly finds him through the internet, and sees no contradiction in that at all.
Elegies for Machines That Still Run
An elegy usually waits for the death. These were written for machines that still work, on the theory that grief can start early and be no less true for it.
