Bird poet
Bird poet
Author: Janie Braverman
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Hide the sky
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Fragility
Fragilityis complicated
Wikipedia: In glass sciences … kinetic fragility … has no direct relationship with the colloquial meaning of the word “fragility”, which more closely relates to the brittleness of a material.
Source material, with photographs: Vesuvius Turned One Victim’s Brain to Glass
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Where do stories begin?
Where do stories begin?For Cory Booker
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This is why we cannot have nice things
This is why we cannot have nice things
This is also why I can’t write a current events post for Under Construction that is … well … current.
From headline, paragraphs 2-5 and 8 of this source material.
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Hello to Spring
Hello to SpringThe Medicinal and Spiritual Uses of Taraxacum officinale
With thanks to Jessica Roeder for pointing me to the source material.
Jessica teaches writing at Lighthouse Writers and dance in Duluth MN.
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Requiem for a rabbit
Requiem for a rabbit
oh how I miss her–a certain energy and way of being in the world, ineffable
when our friends hurt, we hurt
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recall
recallwho wouldn’t trade $400 for a finger?
Reasons to read The New York TImes: the puzzles, The Athletic, and gems like the source material for this erasure.
Source material:
How Much Would You Pay to Make Sure You Never Sawed Off a Finger?
Igloo Recalls Coolers Over Fingertip Amputation and Crushing Risk
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What are you reading?
What are you reading?And why?
First this:
Because we all need a little brightness in dark times—and if you read nothing else today—here are the Winners of the 2025 World Nature Photography Awards. Scroll down to see the blue-spotted mudskipper. You won’t be disappointed.
The what
Some of the most interesting books I read have been recommended to me by other writers. Recent finds:
Girl in a Bear Suit, poems by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn, Winner of the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award
Shark Heart, A Love Story, novel by Emily Habeck, about marriage, motherhood, metamorphosis, letting go, and a beloved husband who transforms into a great white shark (see also Let me tell you – a previous Under Construction post)
Big Breath In, novel by John Straley about a marine biologist dying from cancer, saving babies, and a ton of whale information which is both real and metaphor
The Braille Encyclopedia, Brief Essays on Altered Sight, experimental memoir in the shape of an encyclopedia, by Naomi Cohn (from Rose Metal Press)
Remember – the Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting, NF by Lisa Genova, about exactly what its title says it is
And the why
All stories have an emotional engine that drives them. Mysteries run on curiosity. Thrillers run on heart-thumping adrenaline. Horror stories run on fear.
And the fuel for those emotional engines is anticipation.
Most stories use a fair bit of what’s called negatively valenced anticipation: A sense of worry. Dread. Anxiety that things will get worse. …
But guess what kind of anticipation romance novels use?
Positively valenced.
Katherine Center, in her essay disguised as an author’s note to Hello Stranger, the story of an artist that loses her ability to see faces.
Stop by. Tell us what you’re reading and what you thought of the blue-spotted mudskipper.
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Let me tell you
Let me tell you
Original text from Emily Habeck’s novel, Shark Heart, A Love Story
The quote that haunts me: Life is hard, she thought, and instantly reconsidered. No. It is viscious.
The idea that found me: What if an erasure poem also held some or all of the o’s from the original text?
