Status Updates From Dear Memory: Letters on Wri...
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief by
Status Updates Showing 1-30 of 525
yunling
is starting
“An elegy reflects on the loss of a loved one. What form can express the love of something you never knew but knew existed?”
— Nov 10, 2025 08:17AM
Add a comment
Jen R.
is 93% done
More and more, I think writing is not a choice but an act of patience. An act of listening to silence, into silence.
— Jun 03, 2025 02:42PM
Add a comment
Jen R.
is 92% done
We only talked about poems.
Because we knew the poem was the shooter, shotgun, bullet, and the body. It was life and death. There was no need for anything else.
Do you remember how we chuckled at what Terrance Hayes once said? I wrote it so I wouldn't have to talk about it. Eight months after my mother died, I wrote seventy-five poems in two weeks. But I rarely talked about her dying or death.
— Jun 03, 2025 01:07PM
Add a comment
Because we knew the poem was the shooter, shotgun, bullet, and the body. It was life and death. There was no need for anything else.
Do you remember how we chuckled at what Terrance Hayes once said? I wrote it so I wouldn't have to talk about it. Eight months after my mother died, I wrote seventy-five poems in two weeks. But I rarely talked about her dying or death.
Jen R.
is 87% done
…Osip Mandelstam said: What tense would you choose to live in? I want to live in the imperative of the future passive participle- in the what ought to be? That's where I want to live too—in the what ought to be. I don't know where this is or what it looks like, but I know somehow it begins with language.
— Jun 03, 2025 08:20AM
Add a comment
Jen R.
is 74% done
I have spent a lifetime believing that the main thing that mattered was being smart. I have spent your lifetime, just twelve years, finding an exit from this corridor.
Yesterday, I heard a noise in the sky and saw birds fighting— two crows against one. And I wondered, does the smarter crow always win? Did you know that crows can count to three and parrots can count up to six? Would a parrot win against a crow?
— Jun 02, 2025 08:02AM
Add a comment
Yesterday, I heard a noise in the sky and saw birds fighting— two crows against one. And I wondered, does the smarter crow always win? Did you know that crows can count to three and parrots can count up to six? Would a parrot win against a crow?
Jen R.
is 71% done
Writing feels a bit like trying to attach words to things that are moving, that we cannot see, and that we can never fully understand…
— Jun 02, 2025 06:51AM
Add a comment
Jen R.
is 69% done
I've since realized that it was the art this woman made that resonated with the poet. Not her suffering. Once I could see that, I never envied anyone's suffering again... I began to admire work where language enacted subject matter, not where content overwhelmed or trumped language.
— Jun 02, 2025 06:41AM
Add a comment
Jen R.
is 68% done
…you thought I was too impatient. You told me that writing takes patience and focus. And that it takes time. And that I should demand more of my poems.
You also told me that writing poems isn't a contest or a competitive sport, that there's no finish line to cross. I thought about this— I knew that there was no finish line, but if there were, I would be tempted to try and cross it first.
— Jun 02, 2025 06:36AM
Add a comment
You also told me that writing poems isn't a contest or a competitive sport, that there's no finish line to cross. I thought about this— I knew that there was no finish line, but if there were, I would be tempted to try and cross it first.
