Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia

Writing Lessons (1.)

PAULEITA HANSEL 269 WRITING LESSONS (I.) from Divining (2001) 1lookfor the way things will turn out -Poetics, A.R. Ammons I am trying to find the shape of things, to find where words might go without the prodding of my pen, left to their own devices: startled sliding up as if unnoticed, nestling in the curve of century's end; places I have never seenNiagara Falls, Lookout Mountainsliding down between the floorboards of my mother's kitchen, 1962. I am trying to find the shape of things, to let them unfold without my restless hands forever moving, pressing up or down into the patterns so familiar they are all I ever dare to sew; to let this life unfold: a bolt of doth spilling from a tall shelf, haphazard by its own design; a liar's yarn spinning out incredulously true. ...