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Even though only 20 percent of submissions come from men, they send more than 90 percent of the angry emails I receive in response to being turned down. To these men, no does not mean no. No means the start of an inquiry as to how this possibly could have happened.

A wealth of insights on life and love from Daniel Jones, editor of The New York Times’ popular Modern Love column.

Here is one possible explanation for the particular observation above.

parenting poetry history and literature Modern Love lit Wendell Berry Mary Oliver

I started leaving poems in her shoes in the morning. She had used the shoes as a form of quiet protest, so I decided I would use them to make a quiet stand for hope. When one of your primary strategies as a parent involves leaving Wendell Berry’s “Mad Farmer Liberation Front” in your child’s shoe, it’s clear things aren’t going well.

What I wanted her to know is: People have been in pain before, struggled to find hope, and look what they’ve done with it. They made poetry that landed right in your shoe, the same shoe you didn’t wear for four months because of your despair.

[…]

The most optimistic people often struggle the hardest. They can’t quite square what’s going on in the world with their beliefs, and the disparity is alarming.

Beautiful New York Times essay by Betsy MacWinnery about how she brought her daughter back from the brink of suicide with the poetry of Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver.