Dear readers,
This time last year, I was taking the quintessential Yale class “Daily Themes,” getting up at six a.m. to respond to my daily writing prompts: Use punctuation in an inventive way! Eavesdrop on a stranger’s conversation! Abuse double entendres! I wrote every day. Granted, the class mandated my daily writing through the visceral threat of a grade. But nowadays, with my life’s relative staticity and basement bedroom’s lack of natural light making me feel more impostor-ish and uncreative than ever, I marvel at my March 2020 self, who woke up early, downed her morning vitamins, sucked it up and wrote stuff.
Much of this week’s Herald is about what it means to create. At the center of the issue is Kanyinsola Anifowoshe’s, ES ’23, interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, scholar, and Emory professor Jericho Brown. From the interview, one can uncover many of Brown’s stunning insights into poetry’s place in the world and the purpose of writing out of love. He says, beautifully, that he writes out of love instead of security and safety because love is a much larger risk—being the thing we don’t understand.
In Reviews, Herald staffer Josie Steuer Ingall, TD ’24, discusses the work of 20th century fashion designer Elsa Schiaperelli and the joy her designs can inspire. And in Arts this week, Sofía Kourí, MY ’24, considers how art can “serve as an alternate medium of communication”: a way of grappling with present-day politics.
I’m not saying that this week’s Herald has somehow magically compelled me to complete that short story I’ve been working on all month. But I’m not not saying that, either.
Yours in creative purgatory,
Macrina Wang, ES ’22
Managing Editor
Dear readers,
This time last year, I was taking the quintessential Yale class “Daily Themes,” getting up at six a.m. to respond to my daily writing prompts: Use punctuation in an inventive way! Eavesdrop on a stranger’s conversation! Abuse double entendres! I wrote every day. Granted, the class mandated my daily writing through the visceral threat of a grade. But nowadays, with my life’s relative staticity and basement bedroom’s lack of natural light making me feel more impostor-ish and uncreative than ever, I marvel at my March 2020 self, who woke up early, downed her morning vitamins, sucked it up and wrote stuff.
Much of this week’s Herald is about what it means to create. At the center of the issue is Kanyinsola Anifowoshe’s, ES ’23, interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, scholar, and Emory professor Jericho Brown. From the interview, one can uncover many of Brown’s stunning insights into poetry’s place in the world and the purpose of writing out of love. He says, beautifully, that he writes out of love instead of security and safety because love is a much larger risk—being the thing we don’t understand.
In Reviews, Herald staffer Josie Steuer Ingall, TD ’24, discusses the work of 20th century fashion designer Elsa Schiaperelli and the joy her designs can inspire. And in Arts this week, Sofía Kourí, MY ’24, considers how art can “serve as an alternate medium of communication”: a way of grappling with present-day politics.
I’m not saying that this week’s Herald has somehow magically compelled me to complete that short story I’ve been working on all month. But I’m not not saying that, either.
Yours in creative purgatory,
Macrina Wang, ES ’22
Managing Editor
