Writers Will Be Judged By What They

Something’s Died In Me,” She Goes. “it Took A Long Time For It To Do It, But It’s Dead. You’ve Killed Something, Just Like You’d Took An Axe To It. Everything Is Dirt Now.

Life And Death Matters, Yes. And The Question Of How To Behave In This World, How To Go In The Face Of Everything. Time Is Short And The Water Is Rising.

If We're Lucky, Writer And Reader Alike, We'll Finish The Last Line Or Two Of A Short Story And Then Just Sit For A Minute, Quietly. Ideally, We'll Ponder What We've Just Written Or Read; Maybe Our Hearts Or Intellects Will Have Been Moved Off The Peg Just A Little From Where They Were Before. Our Body Temperature Will Have Gone Up, Or Down, By A Degree. Then, Breathing Evenly And Steadily Once More, We'll Collect Ourselves, Writers And Readers Alike, Get Up, "created Of Warm Blood And Nerves" As A Chekhov Character Puts It, And Go On To The Next Thing: Life. Always Life.

It's Possible, In A Poem Or Short Story, To Write About Commonplace Things And Objects Using Commonplace But Precise Language, And To Endow Those Things—a Chair, A Window Curtain, A Fork, A Stone, A Woman's Earring—with Immense, Even Startling Power.

She Won't Give Him Back His Look.