Grace Paley RIP

Oh, fuck!

wow, that's sad. i haven't read much of her stuff, but what little i have, i loved.

whoa. for some reason I thought she was younger than she was. RIP

Oh that SUCKS.

I now know what the entirety of my next college magazine is going to be about.

I want to make some kind of "she's living across from Barthelme in heaven now" joke -- this is really too bad! I was just reading the long interview she did for the Believer a little while back, and kind of wondering what her kids have turned out like.

Oh no! RIP, wonderful writer.

I took a writing class from her. A great teacher. I can't read any of her work withut hearing her voice. Shit. I would have loved to have seen her again. But yes, an amazingly full life.

that is so cool, Beth!

It was indeed.

This is making me very weepy. But you know what—SHE WOULD HAVE WANTED THAT!

yeah, totally. it's making me sadder as it sinks in.

Words

What has happened?
language eludes me
the nice specifying
words of my life fail
when I call

Ah says a friend
dried up no doubt
on the dessicated
twigs in the swamp
of the skull like
a lake where the
water level has been
shifted by highways
a couple of miles off

Another friend says
No no my dear perhaps
you are only meant to
speak more plainly

In Deepest Summer

the milkweed flower
dries to pod in autumn
flies like seed and dies
in earth and is reborn

but not until
disaster strikes the field
and lays the grasses down
under the weighty ice
in which the water lives

You can get sufficient poetry just out of her titles, half the time:

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

She told us that she'd never read a novel that wouldn't have been better as a short story.

Oh! I have always remembered her list of the Three Worst Pains:
1. Childbirth
2. Toothache
3. Ingrown Toenail

She also said, on the subject of "poetic" prose:
"It should just be a poem, then. I hate "poetic." I hate all the "icks""

More anecdotes, please, Beth!

In addition to her obvious talents in writing those stories, and her always admirable and kick-ass activism, I always just wanted to meet and talk with her--she always just seemed so cool! V v sad.

She was tiny and had an incredibly thick New York accent. She seemed ancient to me back then, a full head of white hair, and she was barely 60. Very motherly, but no-nonsense at the same time. It was a small class—25 students or so around a round table. I wish I had more concrete memories—so much of what I remember is atmosphere—feeling.

A college friend of mine is visiting next week. She also took Grace's class. I'll post some of HER stories!