by Laurie Wagner | Jan 23, 2023 | Blog
Is it enough to take these notes? To be a collector of moments? To be someone who notices the smallest things and who writes them down? Can the bits and pieces of this life; the way he reached for my hand, the text from the sick child, the banjo sitting in the corner of my room wishing to be played be enough? Raised to be special, raised to be important, raised to do more. Is it enough to be someone who picks fallen camellias from the brick path, treasuring the ones that have lost their pink and have gone brown? Is it enough to walk the forest path with an ex-husband who stops you and says, “Listen to the trees,” and for that moment, eyes closed, the sound of the eucalyptus whispering above you is all you hear. Is it alright to make a nest in my bed three mornings this week, because I needed to work and write from a quiet place of pillows and blankets, the cat sleeping between my legs. And because the world can feel rough, but working in a nightgown and an old sweater, hair unbrushed, face unwashed can soften the blow. And can I sit with the thought I had that you can be disappointed and sad because you didn’t get what you wanted, and it’s also no one’s fault. And because we have such a wee time here, I try to keep remembering that what seems so painful in the moment won’t always feel this way. And because Andrea Gibson, the poet, asked us to consider, what if every single person you...
by Laurie Wagner | Jan 10, 2023 | Blog
So I won’t forget the look on my 85-year-old mother’s face when she came upstairs to make contact with me after our little tiff during the holidays. I write to slow that moment down so that I can remember the timid sound of her knock on my door, and the way she entered my room, eyes wide, almost unsure of what she would say. I write to remember the way I rose to meet her so we could hold each other, even though I was still mad, because there wasn’t enough time for anything else. I write so I won’t forget how in the last few years she cries in my arms when it’s time to say goodbye, even after a bumpy visit. And because words are breadcrumbs that I can follow forward and backwards so that I can track myself, and because the writer, Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I make these notes so that I won’t forget the moment last week when I said to my friend, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to intrude on your personal life,” and he said, “you’re part of my personal life,” and how that melted the part of me that feels like an outsider, someone who is knocking on the door, but not invited to the party. I write because David Verdesi says, ”Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” And because today, the workings of my heart – and especially its tinny and rickety bits feel...
by Laurie Wagner | Dec 21, 2022 | Interviews
Marjorie Saiser is a poet living in Nebraska, and is a member of the Wild Writing Family. She writes poems, first for herself, as a way to connect, to find out how she feels, and as a way to locate herself in the world. From there, the poems come to the people, to us, as a gift, so that we too might make a connection to ourselves. This is the generosity of the artist, the poet. Interview :: December 21, 2022 Marjorie’s work has been published in American Life in Poetry, Nimrod, Rattle.com, PoetryMagazine.com, RHINO, Chattahoochee Review, Poetry East, Poet Lore, and other journals. She earned her Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at UNL and has received the WILLA Award and the High Plains Book Award for her latest book in 2022, The Track the Whales Make. You can find out more about Marjorie and her work...
by Laurie Wagner | Dec 20, 2022 | Blog
Some of the richest experiences I’ve had in my life have been when I’m alone, far from home, often in another country. There’s something about being one single human being standing on my own two feet, far from the comforts of home and the things I think I need to make me happy; my friends and family, my routine, the roles I play, and who I think I am. Alone and anonymous, I feel like a citizen of the world, wandering among strangers, eyes wide open and letting every new sensation pour right into me. I will never forget the run I’d take each morning on the wet streets of Bali. I remember the early morning mist as I began to climb the hill from town, and that one turn in the road where the monkeys gathered on phone lines above my head, how I had to keep my eye on them as I ran in case one swooped down to grab my hair. I remember the shopkeepers with big buckets of water, splashing the streets outside of their shops, and that one woman I saw every day, sitting on a milk carton, selling small bags of fruit and hot tea to school children and people heading off to work. I remember entering the outdoor marketplace, the commotion of voices, the piles of bright fruit; bananas and papayas, durian, mangosteen and snakeskin fruit. I remember walking through the market under the morning sun, often the only white person in the crowd, and telling myself, “I am here, I am here.” Or the time, alone and feeling a little lost...
by Laurie Wagner | Dec 8, 2022 | Blog
It started as a simple question, “Do you like salmon?” My friend Steve texted before my trip up to Ashland, Oregon. I’d be staying with Steve and his wife Kate, who were hosting a half-day Wild Writing workshop for their friends, and in honor of Steve’s 70th birthday. “Do you like salmon?” Steve texted a few days before I arrived. He’d be making dinner that Saturday night, and I know he was trying to make it nice for me. I froze, holding the phone in my hand, not sure how to answer. The simple answer was no, I don’t like salmon unless it’s completely disguised by sauces and doesn’t taste anything like salmon, but I didn’t think I could tell Steve that, though I tried. “Um,” my text began, “I don’t really like salmon…” but that felt unkind like I wasn’t being gracious. Here I was, headed to Ashland to spend two nights with these generous students who would be giving me the actual bed they slept in, feeding me for a few days, and gathering their trusted friends to work with me for four hours on a weekend, even though they’d never met in person before. Delete, delete, delete. “You know, I’m more of a chicken girl…” Delete, delete, delete. “Dinner? Who needs dinner?” Delete, delete, delete. I imagined myself eating the salmon quickly so I couldn’t taste it. I’d camouflage it with bites of rice, taking a slug of wine so the fishy-ness would get washed out – so all those flavors would blend and I could sit back at Steve and Kate’s table smiling, appreciating, ever...
