Abide, Abyss
with prompts inspired by Yiyun Li
I just finished reading the memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. To say that it affected me is a terrible understatement. Yiyun wrote this book after losing both of her children to suicide. As I have lost two family members to suicide, I am always interested in how poets and memoirists write about the grief experience that is unique to suicide loss. In this case, she is writing specifically about losing both of her children to suicide, and so it is even more specific.
I frantically underlined and annotated so much of this book. The prompts we will write on this week are based upon my annotations as well as a poem by Gregory Orr that I feel is in conversation with Yiyun’s words.
~Interested in taking a workshop with me? I have two coming up in September! One is a hybrid workshop at Poets House & the other is virtual at Hudson Valley Writers Center.
