Writers and letter writers

 I’m a fan of letter writers. I think Roy Bedichek’s letters are among the minor wonders of literature. And I hope, before long, to at least dip into the letters of Oliver Sacks.

Sacks surprises people in many ways. The number of his letters surprised me. He wrote something like 35,000. His editor estimated they ran to 200,000 pages.

I’ve heard people talk of writer’s block as if it were a universal affliction, something experienced by every writer at some point. I think letter writers might be exempt — at least some of them.

• Sources: William M. Chase, “Tumult and sympathy: The letters of Oliver Sacks”; Commonweal, Aug. 7, 2025.

Oliver Sacks, Letters, edited by Kate Edgar; New York: Knopf, 2024.

A poem that was also a brief

 One of the strangest poems in American literature is “My Case.” It’s a poem but also a legal brief. It’s by Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield in 1881. It begins: 

Today, before my God

I stand,

A patriot and a Christian man;

Condemned, by men to die;

For Obeying,

God’s Command.

 

As a legal brief, “My Case” failed. Guiteau was executed.

I don’t think “My Case” is successful as a poem either. But saying that a poem failed requires one to say what bit of work the poem should have done. Saying what a poem is — or saying what work it does — is a notoriously difficult task.

Still, if I were ever asked to teach a course on poetry, I think I’d start here. I’d begin with a failed poem, a poem that didn’t work — in my judgment.

To me, this poem has a defect: It’s not convincing. That, at least, is a place to start an inquiry about what sort of things a poem must try to do.

I never heard “My Case” discussed as a work of literature or of jurisprudence. As a historical footnote, I wish it were better known. Although Guiteau was mentally ill, he was able to buy a gun, a Webley .442 revolver. Although Guiteau was mentally ill, the courts found that justice would be served by executing him.

The alert historian might detect some recurring themes.

• “Charles Guiteau’s reasons for assassinating President Garfield, 1882” is available at the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History:

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/charles-guiteaus-reasons-assassinating-president

A transcription of the poem is here:

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/t-06319.pdf

Toccoa Falls and Currahee Mountain

 The Wise Woman and I are markers of special occasions. Years ago, we made trips to the opera and symphony. Now we’re more likely to visit natural wonders. We stayed in Toccoa, a town of about 9,000 in northeastern Georgia, not far from the South Carolina line.

The falls on Toccoa Creek drop 186 feet into a pool. We sat and listened for a long time. Turkey vultures were roosting in a dead tree on the bluff. They’d take off from the tree and achieve soaring altitude immediately. It was wonderful watching them climb into the clear sky almost effortlessly, floating on the currents.

Currahee Mountain, just south of town, was the site of Camp Toccoa, where Col. Bob Sink trained airborne troopers during World War II. If you’ve read or seen Band of Brothers, you know about the camp at the base of the mountain and the long road up. Sink used to say, “Three miles up; three miles down.”

We decided half the route would be enough for us, so we missed the summit. We parked by the few barracks that remain and headed up the mountain, moving much slower than the soldiers of my father’s generation. The wind was blowing, as wind tends to do on mountains. We listened as we walked.

The small ways we practice

 I like to get up before the house wakes up. I like to drink coffee and think. 

I’m aware of the great traditions that teach students to sit correctly, to become aware of their breathing, to empty their minds. But I like black coffee. Instead of emptying my mind, I try to pay attention to what comes up, to see if anything of interest is caught in the current, floating down the stream.

I like these lines from Gunilla Norris:

 

Each of us must construct the small ways

that we scaffold our silence.

In the end we must simply practice.

 

• Source: Gunilla Norris, Inviting Silence: Universal Principles of Meditation; Goldens Bridge, N.Y.: BlueBridge, 2004, p. 46.

A great pastime

 You go into the library to browse. You pick up six books and head to a table. You thumb through the first four and are mildly interested. Then you open the fifth, and a part of the world that had seemed forbidding suddenly opens to you.

That’s the author-reader connection. Ray Bradbury called it the feeling that you are meeting someone you are destined to meet. It was destiny that led you, the reader, to this author. Bradbury chuckled at the idea, but I bet many readers will recognize it. One author speaks to you in a way nobody else does. Tolstoy was getting at something similar when he wrote that a work of art communicates in a profound way.

I’m interested in Bradbury in part because his interests, tastes and instincts were different from mine. But for all that difference, we were both graduates of the public library.

We’d agree on this: Browsing is one of humanity’s great pastimes. May there always be stacks to browse.

• Source: Ray Bradbury gave his lecture “Telling the Truth” at The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, April 2001. A recording is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-r7ABrMYU

Ray Bradbury's advice on writing

 I wish I’d heard Ray Bradbury’s advice to young writers when I was young.

Bradbury suggested a curriculum: Read a short story, a poem and an essay every night for 1,000 nights. While you’re at it, write one short story a week.

I would go slower. I would read at the suggested pace until I found something I liked. Then I would slow way down.

While I wouldn’t follow his advice exactly, I do wish I’d heard it.

In a lecture to writers, he said: “I was a collector of metaphors.”

Bradbury read thousands of stories, essays and poems and learned to look for metaphors. The metaphors rattled around his mind. Eventually sparks flew.

I’m an odd one to be saying anything about Bradbury. I am somehow immune to the pleasures of science fiction. (Bradbury was popular with my schoolmates. But even as a schoolboy, I was baffled.) Later, his politics struck me as unfortunate.

But when he speaks of the questions writers should ask themselves, I’m with him. “Who am I?” is better than “What will sell?” 

• Source: Ray Bradbury’s lecture “Telling the Truth” was the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, April 2001. A recording is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-r7ABrMYU

My kind of book

 I recently read Gunilla Norris’s Companions on the Way: A Little Book of Heart-full Practices. Several recent notes have been about the idea of practices. (If you’re interested, start with “Practices,” Aug. 30, 2025.)

But I also was interested in the form of the book. It’s just 45 pages. I’d guess it’s 6,000 words, with another 1,000 in introductions and notes to readers. Norris tried to get at the idea of what a practice is by suggesting 23. One — she calls it “the morning lope” — is one I know well. I make it a practice to walk through the woods to get in touch with the place that has somehow become my place. An earlier version of me walked along Zarzamora Creek.

I’m sure there are tomes that collect all there is to know about practices. But this brief book was what I was looking for.

Years ago, I was trying to understand what a ritual is — what we humans are trying to get at with ritual behavior and why we behave in that peculiar way. I consulted a massive book and learned a lot of facts about the long story of rituals without getting much closer to my original questions.

Norris’s book was published by Homebound Publications. One of its authors, Edward Anderson, said his Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances came in at 84 pages and about 10,000 words. The press was founded by Leslie M. Browning and seems to have several interests. One is LGBT literature. Another is “contemplative storytelling,” and I’d guess Norris’s book fits that category. Another is that a long essay works as a short book that fits into a pocket.

• Source: Gunilla Norris, Companions on the Way: A Little Book of Heart-full Practices; Pawcatuck, Conn.: Homebound Publications, 2017.