“If there was one thing I learned from Tess Durbeyfield, Lily Bart, and Constance Chatterly,” writes Gina Di Salvo in the Saturday Essay, “it was not to get trapped.” When Di Salvo becomes a mother, classic works of literature that once provided comfort are reluctantly dropped in favor of the popular children’s film, Frozen. But elements of feminism in the plot make the constant movie screenings easier to bear.
Then, in the Sunday Interview, Ben Tanzer talks to poet Jonathan Travelstead about grief, exercise, writing in isolation, and Travelstead’s collection, How We Bury Our Dead. The author argues that anxiety is “the best tool only when confined to the final stages of the writing process,” but it can be “stifling in the early, creative stages…”
