First post 19 October 2007

So this is my entry into the world of having my own blog and I'm holping that after a while there are lots of responses and lots of comments on what I have to say, what other people have to say.

I admit to feeling a little out of my element, but having started this, it's something I'm going to try and make work.

So a couple of things to start:

I expect in the coming days I'll be writing about what it says on the top of the blog: poetry, teaching, New York, politics, and everything else that actually matters.

So start today by advising whoever reads this to see the new issue of Teachers & Writers magazine (twc.org) which includes a series of tributes to Grace Paley (okay, I wrote one). The one by Herb Kohl seems particularly moving because it gets at what Grace stood for, that sense not of what it means to be a writer in some isolated way but of what it means to be a writer in the world.