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The Magical Moment in Which You Realize that You Are, or Will Be a Writer

By Anita Mathias

The Magical Moment in Which You Realize that You Are, or Will Be a Writer

Anne Sexton said she realized that she was a poet (I suppose she meant that she had the capacity to be a poet) while watching John Berryman read on TV.

It really a magical moment, the sort of moment in fairy tales when Snow White or Sleeping Beauty discover that they really are princesses.

My own moment came in two installments. In my early twenties I started writing poetry in a rush. And it was like,”Okay, I love this, I can do it. Not as well as Keats, okay, but well enough to give me, and perhaps some others, pleasure.”

My next moment happened several years later. I was reading a description of a family united around the consumption of gargantuan meals in Patricia Hampl’s “A Romantic Education,” and thought “Yes, that’s like my family. I can do this too.” Around that time, I read Annie Dillard’s “An American Childhood” about a bookish and privileged childhood in a steel town much like Jamshedpur, India, where I grew up, each chapter about a different passion or obsession, and I thought, “Yes, I can do this. And this is how.”

Life intervened in the form of two children, health issues, the need to work to pay for the girls’ private school education, but now I am back to writing happily, hoping to complete my memoir, and my slender volume of poetry.
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Filed Under: books_blog, Good writing, Memoir, Poetry

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Anita Mathias: About Me

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My Books

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

Wandering Between Two Worlds - Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

Francesco, Artist of Florence - Amazom.com
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Amazon.co.uk

The Story of Dirk Willems

The Story of Dirk Willems - Amazon.com
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Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
  • On Yoga and Following Jesus
  • Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus
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  • Life- Changing Journaling: A Gratitude Journal, and Habit-Tracker, with Food and Exercise Logs, Time Sheets, a Bullet Journal, Goal Sheets and a Planner
  • On Loving That Which Love You Back
  • “An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  
  • Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice
  • The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

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What I’m Reading

Fierce Attachments: A Memoir
Vivian Gornick

Fierce Attachments  - Amazon.com
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Wanderlust
Rebecca Solnit

Solnit --  Amazon.com
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Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
Kathleen Norris

KATHLEEN NORRIS --  Amazon.com
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Opened Ground: Poems, 1966-96
Seamus Heaney

Opened Ground: Poems, 1966-96 Amazon.com
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