by Laurie Wagner | Dec 1, 2014 | Blog
Maya Stein is one of my very favorite writers in the whole world. She’s also one of my dearest friends – which shouldn’t preclude you from checking out this interview, but it might help you understand why I was able to ask her questions ranging from the see-through dress I saw her wearing once in the middle of the day, to the tumor the size of an egg that was lodged in her spine. I also talk to her about her fine, fine writing. Her weekly 10-Line-Tuesday poems are the medicine I take each week to help me locate what matters. Maya has a rare talent for naming things exactly as they are, and which allows me to understand my own life so much better. Here’s one of my favorites: scrapping the lawn It would be simpler, surely, to stay in tune with the neighbors, whose yards rest, placid, at the foot of each house with nary a dip in topography save a trio of bushes soldiering the front windows. And it’s true that what you’ve got planned is an upheaval you can’t predict, a loose cannon of horticultural proportions, since you’ve neither the education nor experience to guide you, exactly. But there are sacrifices for every choice that goes against the grain. You don’t slash and burn without cleaving from your own comfort. Even now, as the lawn lies partially scraped and scorned, you see you could turn back, patch the broken pieces, ignore the song of wildness and color calling you. Maybe the grass doesn’t need changing. But you do, and that knowing’s clear enough to wrap your novice hands on awkward tools to find the garden...
