Writing
What it means when your father dies. How it feels when summer comes. What it's like to live in a great but troubled American city. The value of wearing sunscreen. These are just a few of the topics that Mary Schmich addresses in this second, expanded edition of Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now, a collection of her columns from the Chicago Tribune, including the 10 that won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Schmich is the rare newspaper columnist whose writing resonates long after it's published and far beyond the place she lives. She may be best known for a column widely called "Wear Sunscreen"--misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut and turned into a hit recording by Baz Luhrmann--but her writing ranges as widely as life itself. It can be slyly humorous, deeply moving, or tough. She addresses subjects as varied as family love, sexual harassment, long friendships, poverty, and Chicago violence. Every city has its voices, the enduring writers who both explain and create a city's culture. Chicago has had many, including the legendary Mike Royko and Studs Terkel. Mary Schmich is among them. In a hectic age, her writing lifts us, calms us, and helps us understand.
Carrie: I am a clipper - of ads, articles, comics and columns, so how lovely it is when they are collected for me in one place! This compendium of our very own Chicago Tribune columnist’s greatest hits is worth a read and re-read and a share and “listen to this” with a book buddy. She writes most poignantly about the human side of the news, and usually spends ample time on reflection about the meaning in events big and small. Some of these gems are anchored in time, like 9/11 (“Going to Ground Zero”) and Hurricane Katrina, (“The Last Man in New Orleans”); others have Chicago flavor (Michael Jordan, Mayor Daley, Roger Ebert); all are thoughtful, well-written, and shareable.
Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets--aspiring or practicing--can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry's ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend--a friend who is willing to share everything he's learned about the art he's spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.