Comments on: julie eger | rendezvous | kitchen secrets | things my grandmother told me

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:54:43 +0000

I find the contrast striking between John Bennett’s insistence on aloneness (as an apt tribute to Bukowski), and the valuation here of the social aspect of writing (publishing). It’s pretty to think otherwise, but the correlation between quality writing and publishing has always been accidental, and that’s the way it should be — everyone has their own path. Publishing is about how one connects to others, mostly in the publishing world, but also to a distant other that wants to find themselves in someone else’s use of words. I think we all have to think long and hard about what it means to be a writer as our civilization continues to transition back to one of individual responsibility — writers, however skilled, cannot be responsible for the enlightenment of others.

By: Barbara Vroman

Barbara Vroman — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:37:38 +0000

I have been in awe of Julie’s writing since I read her first novel (unpublished)
about Arbishaw County (backwards for the real county we live in.) It began with children meeting in an old chicken coop to receive missions to accomplish that would have astonished and frightened most of their elders.
It also depicted Julie’s fictional account of real relatives like the Gramma they couldn’t find because she was way up on the top of the church painting the steeple that no sane man had been willing to take on. Both Julie and her writing are extraordinary. People are beginning to take note. She won first place in the Wisconsin Regional Writing poetry contest a year or so ago when they had received a record number of entries. I am in awe of Julie.

By: London Accountant

London Accountant — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:03:44 +0000

I love the way the lines in ‘Things My Grandmother Told Me’ follow and connect with each other, like the way the theme of looking travels through the poem in the lines about the sun, and the dangers of burning your eyes – to the potentially (equally harmful?) stares of men – and again, the ensuing physical pain that follows! Then all the talk of kicking followed with gentle irony by a lesson to mind your manners.

Your ‘this is the way…’ lines are great – for me, and I don’t know if this is what you intended, it mimics the rhythm that these kinds of advice from elder figures starts to follow – so that you no longer even hear the individual words (‘yeah, yeah, grandma’) – but then your attention is brought to that very dissolution of meaning into rhythm by the mention of the word ‘rhythm’ and the very valuable lesson (which underpins all others!) at the end of the poem.

By: Lucy Palmer

Lucy Palmer — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:35:17 +0000

Julie, I want to read more so you must share! My grandmother would tell you hiding a talent such as yours is the devil’s work ;) She had a bit of a preoccupation with the devil, my old gran.

By: mary j. kunstweker

mary j. kunstweker — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:18:05 +0000

fun writing.
you go, Julie!
nize twists & tumbles.

By: Julie Eger

Julie Eger — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:03:57 +0000

Thanks for the comments everyone… it was great to ‘be’ here.

By: Julie Eger

Julie Eger — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:53:20 +0000

Kris! The duty of the writing life, I’m beginning to understand, is not only to capture but to ‘share.’ As for how to fold a fitted sheet, according to my grandmother, it involved a lot of tucking. :o)

By: Robert M. Zoschke

Robert M. Zoschke — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 01:17:56 +0000

If Julie ever does send that manuscript…please publish it in a most- limited first edition. And whoever’s name you put at the top of the patrons’ list, please make the price of the book significant enough that the only people who will be patrons are people who will read and cherish re-reading the book. Surely Julie, and any writer with the talent to produce what you have sampled here, would much more desire to have a limited edition of their work being read and re-read by patrons who happen to be literature enthusiasts….not patrons who happen to take books they have been patrons of and deposit them at less-than-second-hand used bookstores in town…(a peculiar act I do believe Ralph Murre would find as alarming as I did if he saw it first-hand in the less-than-second-hand store…)

By: Kris

Kris — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:03:53 +0000

Maybe writing the poems themselves is enough for Julie herself; but reading more of her work is what I want for myself. What then is the duty of the Writing Life? And how do you fold fitted sheets?

By: Julie Eger

Julie Eger — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:33:46 +0000

Ah, Norbert – Touche’. And I’m still smiling. Another thing my grandmother told me – “It’s a woman’s job to frustrate a man.” My grandmother would be proud of me! I love what you wrote, there is such passion there. And I will ‘get ‘er done.’