Behind the Books We Write

^{photo credit: Barb Kinney}

by Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Glorians

     What if we wrote a sequel to each book we write composed of what we didn’t say in the first book? Would they be comprised of secrets? Offensive passages? The truth beyond the truth? After the facts and beyond the craft of the narrative we have constructed, what did we omit, what did we forget, and what did we come to discover, uncover after our book was published?  

     Here is how I would begin the sequel to The Glorians – Visitations From The Holy Ordinary now.

     In the fall of 1973, I enrolled in my first poetry class at the University of Utah. Robert Mezey was a visiting poet. He was blunt and self-assured around our workshop table, and at times, a captious man. The literary critic Dana Gioia described Mezey as “brilliant, mercurial and often rebellious.”

     What I remember most about my first writing professor was his first pronouncement: “I know you want to be poets, some of you will be, most of you won’t. But here is my one piece of advice: Never write about a dream.” 

     Somewhere within the DNA of my eighteen-year old self, I registered this advice as a protest. It took me 50 years to finally write about a dream.