“Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines . . . where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldly…”

If you could ask one novelist to write a story about your life, who would you pick?  For me, it would be Anne Tyler, whose power lies in her ability to capture both truth and humanity in profound metaphors.  For example, the main character in this novel is a runner … Read More

“A writer’s goal is to light up the sky.”

Kooser 3As a fan of Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Ted Kooser, I couldn’t wait to see what he would say about using metaphors in this little-known book for people who want to start writing.  He writes, “. . .  an apt metaphor opens a door out of a box, gives … Read More

“The light tastes like laughter.”

Shearin2This metaphor is simple, and yet it packs a punch. It’s from the poem “The Town Where I Belong” in Faith Shearin‘s new collection Telling the Bees. Part of its power comes from the way three of the five senses are used in these few words, a feat … Read More

“I had to live on the lip of a waterfall, exhausted.”

Dillard2You might expect a coming-of-age book to have a plot, to describe the who-what-when-where-how-and-why. But Annie Dillard is not a typical person, nor is her book a typical memoir. She concentrated on describing how she wanted to notice and remember everything. Her goal was to “break up through the skin … Read More