GrubWrites

ARCHIVE FOR Writing the Family

Yet Another Reason not to Marry a Poet

grubstreet Image

My four-year-old and I were recently walking to the playground when she noticed a picture of a young girl, not much older than her, hugging a dog.

 

Aww, she said, what a cute puppy.

 

I didn’t have the heart to explain why a picture like that would be posted to a telephone pole, and so I smiled and continued walking when she started to sound out the letters in bold on top of the poster.

Ben Berman

The Art of Putting Things Together

grubstreet Image

Last night, my two-year-old spent the evening dropping fistfuls of fried rice from her high seat while singing Humpty Dumpty had a great faaaaall!

 

I probably should have intervened – taken her bowl away or redirected her. At the very least I should have stopped making sound effects every time the rice hit the carpet.

 

But as a poet, I’ve developed the ability to detach myself from my parental responsibilities and view my kids, instead, as adorable little metaphors.

Ben Berman

Brain Storms

grubstreet Image

A poet, wrote Randall Jarrell, is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

 

Maybe it’s just the season that’s upon us but to me the creative process feels a lot less like standing in thunderstorms waiting for lightning than trudging through snow, desperately trying to clear a path.

Ben Berman

Mother May I

grubstreet Image

Because I tend to write in the mornings and play with my daughters in the evenings, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between children's games and the writing process.

Most of the time, the link is a bit of a stretch.

Hide and seek has potential to offer some common ground – writing, after all, is a process of discovery – but there are only a few good hiding spots in our condo, and my three-year-old is content to hide in the exact same spot ten times in a row.

Ben Berman