This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a poem by Maria Richardson, and two pieces from McSweeney's

~
It is both selfish of me and not
to ask you to stay a little longer. 

The mountains are playing that game
where one of them wears a cloud as a veil

and then the others follow. 
They are forcing us to play. 

They are asking us to dedicate the day
to the books on the bottom shelf. 
...

--From "To You," a poem by Maria Richardson, Best American Poetry blog (January 11, 2014).    

 

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.  My short stories and novels have always filled my life with meaning, but, at least in the first decade of my career, they were no more capable of supporting me than my dog was.  But part of what I love about both novels and dogs is that they are so beautifully oblivious to economic concerns.  We serve them, and in return they thrive.  It isn't their responsibility to figure out where the rent is coming from.  
--From This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2013). 

Dear Class of 1994,

I regret to announce my resignation as “Most Likely to Succeed.” Nearly twenty years since the senior superlative was announced in our yearbook, it’s clear that I’ve fallen short of your expectations.  . . .

--From "An Open Letter to My 1994 High School Class Regarding My Designation of 'Most Likely to Succeed,'" a piece by Eric Corpus, McSweeney's (January 25, 2013). 

Dear TV Snobs,

TV was invented because we were tired of talking to each other and needed something else to do. You, though, keep trying to have intellectual discussions about politics and the arts while we’re watching Dancing with the Stars. Despite your oddity, we’ve tried not to make fun of you. We learned how wrong it is to judge people by watching special episodes of Family Ties and The Brady Bunch.   . . .

--From "An Open Letter to TV Snobs," a piece by Beverly Petravicius, McSweeney's (August 19, 2011). 

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (stories)

~
She told him her only memory of her mother.  She was downtown, with her mother, on a winter day.  There was snow between the sidewalk and the street.  She had just learned how to tell time, and she looked up at the Post Office clock and saw that the moment had come for the soap opera she and her mother listened to every day on the radio.  She felt a deep concern, not because of missing the story but because she wondered what would happen to the people in the story, with the radio not turned on, and her mother and herself not listening.  It was more than concern she felt, it was horror, to think of the way things could be lost, could not happen, through some casual absence or chance. 
--From "Post and Beam," a short story by Alice Munro, published by The New Yorker (December 11, 2000) and reprinted in her collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (Knopf, 2001), pp. 188-218 in the Vintage Contemporaries paperback edition.

Two poems and a memoir by Tarn Wilson

~
Late summer 1971, my father quit his job in Washington, D.C. as the Brookings Institution's first computer programmer, bought an old school bus with "Suck Nixon" painted on the side, and packed us off for British Columbia. 
        . . . Set loose in the primeval Canadian wilderness, my sister and I were to be educated by the land, released from shame, fear, insecurities, sexual hangups, and shallow social conventions imposed by a corrupt and repressive culture.  In our natural, unspoiled state, we'd be happy and free.

--From The Slow Farm, a memoir by Tarn Wilson (Ovenbird Books Nonfiction Series, 2014). 

 

 

Betsy's boyfriend dumped her this morning

and when she comes to the door

I am in my underpants, unable to console her. 

...

--From "Living Alone with Small Dogs," a poem by Matthew Siegel, Cimarron Review (Issue 181, Fall 2012), p. 14.   

 

 

She used the stadium. I would have
chosen the bridge. We’re not even

 

Division One. Our tailgate crowds
are mostly enthusiastic about beer. 

. . .

--From "Ready Regret," a poem by Lisa Olstein, Linebreak (July 22, 2014).