Curiosity

Alie Ward, Pantoums, an exercise for you, and of course, Cleo the Intrepid Pup

Cleo checking out Little Blue.

Greetings from the puppy nursery,

I can’t say I wasn’t warned about the prodigious energy of Aussie puppies. This little dynamo is on the move, and unfortunately, very smart and a pro at shooting out the door faster than we can catch her. And we are completely smitten with her. She’s full of ebullience and opinions and also a complete cuddle muffin. Best of all, Hudson loves her. He says, “Thank you for giving me a puppy for my ninth birthday.”

Aaaaand we are operating on very little sleep. On the plus side, she is very good at potty training. And she’s extremely curious, a quality that I admire in any being.

Speaking of, I had the great privilege of getting to see and hear Alie Ward of Ologies fame at Smith College last week. Ologies, as I’ve written here previously, is a delightful science podcast exploring everything from cockroaches to the human voice to fear. The thread that loosely binds the episodes is Alie Ward’s own curiosity. Like mine, like (I’m guessing) yours, it is insatiable. Your curiosity drives everything you do. Curiosity can heal your soul, inspire people around you, and change the world.

photo by my awesome intern Weina Lu

Below are Alie’s five pieces of advice:

1. Ask smart people non-smart questions. Yeah, yeah, there’s never a stupid question, so ask away—but also pay attention to whom you are asking. If you ask a stupid question to a non-smart person, you might not get a smart answer back.

2. Two brains equal three brains. Collaborate. (And I would add, it’s more like beaucoup de brains. Because when we’re bouncing ideas off another person, we are actually thinking better than when we’re alone!)

3. It’s not what you know; it’s what you are willing to learn. Put knowledge and curiosity before your ego. You don’t need to be good at something in order to do it. You have to do it to get good at it.

4. Failure is part of success. It’s a component of success. There are so many micro failures on the way to success. Get something––anything––out and tweak it. Do the thing that you’re avoiding the most. Not doing something is the easiest way to fail. Write down what you want to do.

5. Show up like you belong and have fun. When you are scared to be somewhere, go somewhere, do something new, just act as if you are with your people living your authentic best life already. You won’t find your people by smoothing all your edges.

Somehow, in the midst of puppydom, I’m trying to keep up with my own poetry and songwriting for 30 Poems this November. So far, I’ve written some version of a poem a day plus three new songs! I’ve shared my prompts with the other poets who have sign up for this fundraising challenge, but here is one for you to try.

Memory as Echo (Pantoum)

A pantoum is made of 4-line stanzas where lines repeat. In each stanza, line 2 and line 4 become line 1 and line 3 of the next stanza. That repetition creates an echoing, dreamlike effect.

The assignment is to write a pantoum about a recurring memory. Let the repeated lines show how your relationship to the memory shifts. To see a classic version, check out “Pantoum of the Great Depression” by Donald Justice.

Here is my attempt:

We wanted to quit our day jobs
Travel the country together for art
Without end, and with little apparent forethought
Five musicians in a white ram van

Travelling the country together for art
We thought we’d see everything from the windshield
Five musicians in a white ram van
Saw miles and miles of tall dried cornstalks

We thought we’d see everything from the windshield
But too soon, we turned away, we turned inside
We dove into journals, novels, obsessions
Until every day became the same

Too soon we turned away, we turned inside
And missed all the exit signs for tourists
Until every day became the same
Because we were commuters, after all.

Missing all the exit signs for tourists
We drove to the same motels, ate at the same franchises
Because we were commuters after all
More intent on the destiny than the journey

We chose the same motels, ate at the same franchises
We might as well have been home
More intent on the destiny than the journey
We forgot that art is made from odd encounters.

We might as well have been home.
We wanted to quit our day jobs.
We forgot that art is made from odd encounters
Without end and with little apparent forethought.

As always, I would be grateful for your support in my efforts to write poems and songs on behalf of Center for New Americans. You can contribute to my page here which raises money for this amazing organization.

Celebrations! My Friends’ New Books!

I just had the great pleasure of attending Patricia Lee Lewis’s book launch for her debut novel—held on her 88th birthday! Patricia is a literary patron saint in the Pioneer Valley and an amazing writer. I can’t wait to read her novel The Thorns of Mesquite. See video above for all of us singing Happy Birthday to her.

Great novels I have read or am reading!

And I’ve now finished my dear friend Erin White’s AMAZING novel Like Family, about a trio of families related by blood and by choice, set in a Hudson River Valley town modeled on the Pioneer Valley area. I really loved this book and was very sad to finish it.

Retreats, Workshops, Accountability

Though it might be fun to just hibernate for 3 months, January Retreat will be the weekend of January 23-25, 2026. For now till November 30, it’s on sale! Generative writing retreat, open to all genres. Come in person or via Zoom–-the retreat is hybrid! Per-day option also available; email writingitupinthegarden@gmail.com for information.

Spring Equinox Retreat will be the weekend of March 20-22, 2026. Springtime is a great time to start a new project or go deeper into an existing one.

Workshop Enrollment for Winter Session will commence on November 29. More about that soon! And Morning Seeding & Tending, an accountability group with a daily prompt and very friendly faces all sharing the journey of daily craftsperson writing their hour of words, is yours for a paid subscription to this newsletter.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I am so grateful for your readership and support.

Love, Nerissa