What I'm teaching is how to write from the body. If you generate sound and rhythm, that's what the body feels. So you're creating at the sentence level a reality that cannot be denied. I'm feeling it, versus just a bland sentence that's only conveying information or moving the story along. It's a profound difference.
The thrill was all mine Nina. You are a polymath grounded through the body. Interviewing you was like deep sea diving but with breath and sunlight and play. Thank you for sharing your passion and wisdom with this world.
What an amazing conversation—I didn’t want it to end. And I loved the awe thought experiments—I will try them. Definitely many of us need more awe in our lives! I’d love to see more of these deep talks.
Thank you for being here with us Armand! Nina is quite an inspiration and teacher for us all. I'm glad you found your way to this interview to breathe her in. ;)
"Well, as a young reader, and I'm thinking 11 or 12, I started writing down sentences that excited me. I found old journals. So way back, way back then, I was drawn to language and sentences that did something different."
How I wish I'd done the same. I'm so (relatively) late in life to appreciating the nourishment of certain sentences.
This is a wonderful interview. Thank you both for this.
This was mesmerising Nina and Kimberly, I paused so many times to reflect on the conversation, to place it into my own tiny universe of perspectives... when you said this Kimberly "when I read your sentence excavations, I feel like a dancer again. I feel my body respond. I actually want to move." I let out an audible sigh because yes! OMG yes, I feel this when I read beautiful sentences too, yours do that to me often, (not that I was ever a ballerina - I can hear my father chuckling at the very thought from his grave) but all my senses respond, that prickle of "like there's a whole other way to write from the body." (Nina in response to you) Damn yes!
I have saved this to listen to again and again, just to remind myself that its ok to find beautiful words and prose for my simple life that I love to infinity and beyond - Thank you both so very much xx
I love that you heard Kimberly, and her words resonated, and your body responded. It's true! That tingling or shiver when you encounter a beautiful sentence or image or landscape, all of it speaks to the body, and often, for me, the awe makes me open up the body again to the bigger world to see more. Thank you so much for these comments and for listening.
Nina and Kimberly, thank you for sharing such a warm, interesting conversation. I welcomed your reminder Nina that the human spirit can only take so much despair. It felt like you were saying to me, "you are not the only one feeling this heaviness but it doesn't have to be that way." With this, and so much else, you are offering a sense of lightness.
I love your focus on beautiful words and what they add to the human experience. I wholeheartedly agree. So often I will read a paragraph or line that stops me in my tracks. What a gift to have been given, this gift of words!
Lastly, I appreciate your lesson about the rhythm of our words. The way you framed it in this conversation was amazing and makes it much easier to hold on to.
Kimberly, you are a rock-star interviewer. Your essence shines through and makes me wish I was curling up on the couch beside you for a cup of tea!
Thank you so much for your generous words. I think that with too much despair, the spirit, the will, the energy of vitality (whatever one is comfortable calling it) becomes waterlogged with too much sorrow. It becomes difficult to move or act.
Kimberly is an amazing interviewer--a keen listener and highly intuitive.
I agree Donna, Nina offers us a sense of beauty, optimism and lightness, even within the difficult subject of climate change. She's a beacon for many of us, if only we could all enroll at Stanford and be her students!
And rock-star, hehe. That's a new one! I'll see if I can find some McJagger pleather pants at the thrift store and wear them around the yard for my hens and cats. :)
Stunning sentences was one of the first things I found on Substack and I loved it. I'm always thinking about the construction and building of meaning through words and sentences, reading back, editing, considering. I love the rhythm and rhyme of prose. So Nina's careful analysis was brilliant. Thanks Nina.
Thanks so much for another fascinating interview Kimberley. (Funnily enough my daughter just lent me Ocean Vuong's book).
Thank you so much, Jonathan! I really feel this is part of the writer's education, and this close looking, this slowing dow,n and understanding a sentence seeps into your writing.
Isn't it wonderful Jonathan! I had no idea how exciting the deconstruction of a sentence could be. I felt her passion on the page but it was especially fun to feel how Nina embodies it, her eyes sparkling and voice lilting as she felt into the rhythm, pulse and song of the Faulkner sentence I shared. So fun to hear your reflection. Thank you for being here.
A wonderful conversation you two. Something that really stood out for me was Nina’s suggestion to just “do something”. I related to that a lot as sometimes doing almost anything feels better than just floating aimlessly. :)
So true Michael. And Nina had concrete thoughts about what that "something" might be. It doesn't mean we all have to run for office and change policy! We can plant gardens, teach children, learn about what's happening locally in our towns and cities. That rallying energy is so important and I especially felt it after reading her collection of stories In this Ravishing World where the earth herself feels buoyed by our efforts.
Thank you both for this captivating conversation, bursting with beauty, sparkling thoughts, and aliveness.
I totally resonate with the experience of creating sentences which come alive. Sentences which don't just convey information through the sequence of words and their meaning (filling the mind with facts) but also the rhythm, pattern, and scanning of a piece of written language which reverberates in the heart.
"my standard is, does it make me feel alive?" you say, Nina.
I love that! And agree wholeheartedly. I feel, the quality of writing you describe, and practice, and teach, is what transforms plain prose into an art form.
Veronika I'm so happy to see you here and feel your overlapping sentiments with Nina. You two are indeed kindred spirits. During our conversation I kept thinking back to your "wild-word-woods" where everything shimmers with life, and more so because of all your deep reflection and study. Nina, I'm certain you will feel the same delight I do when I read Veronika's wordcasts, this recent one especially had me flying: https://substack.com/@veronikabond/p-149846105
SUCH an amazing conversation. Wow. Her sense of awe and her take on Heidegger make me want to reread him daily... I'll need the pocket version for my tote!
"And so I was just starting out. I earned my MFA, but no one had taught at that level, the precise, you know, diction, syntax, imagery, sound, rhythm and breaking down all the elements of style, imagery, schemes and tropes. So I kind of went in and taught myself all of it and read as much as I could to figure out grammar and figure out not just grammar because I want, I am fascinated by what grammar can do in terms of generate meaning and sound. So what I'm teaching, I think myself first and then students at the university and now on Substack is how to write from the body. If you generate sound and rhythm, that's what the body feels."
🥰 This speaks to me more than you can know. Writing from the body. That is what I want to feel from an author when I read, and that is what I strive to create when I write.
What a thrill and an honor to be interviewed by you! Thank you so much!
The thrill was all mine Nina. You are a polymath grounded through the body. Interviewing you was like deep sea diving but with breath and sunlight and play. Thank you for sharing your passion and wisdom with this world.
What an amazing conversation—I didn’t want it to end. And I loved the awe thought experiments—I will try them. Definitely many of us need more awe in our lives! I’d love to see more of these deep talks.
Thanks Nina and Kimberly for doing this!
Thank you for listening, Armand. I think we forget, we humans, that we are part of a much bigger story that has been going on for a long time.
Thank you for being here with us Armand! Nina is quite an inspiration and teacher for us all. I'm glad you found your way to this interview to breathe her in. ;)
"Well, as a young reader, and I'm thinking 11 or 12, I started writing down sentences that excited me. I found old journals. So way back, way back then, I was drawn to language and sentences that did something different."
How I wish I'd done the same. I'm so (relatively) late in life to appreciating the nourishment of certain sentences.
This is a wonderful interview. Thank you both for this.
Thank you for listening!
never a dunce cap for you....you'd just make it a luminous accesory anyways 🙃
fascinating interview many ideas
This was mesmerising Nina and Kimberly, I paused so many times to reflect on the conversation, to place it into my own tiny universe of perspectives... when you said this Kimberly "when I read your sentence excavations, I feel like a dancer again. I feel my body respond. I actually want to move." I let out an audible sigh because yes! OMG yes, I feel this when I read beautiful sentences too, yours do that to me often, (not that I was ever a ballerina - I can hear my father chuckling at the very thought from his grave) but all my senses respond, that prickle of "like there's a whole other way to write from the body." (Nina in response to you) Damn yes!
I have saved this to listen to again and again, just to remind myself that its ok to find beautiful words and prose for my simple life that I love to infinity and beyond - Thank you both so very much xx
Susie,
I love that you heard Kimberly, and her words resonated, and your body responded. It's true! That tingling or shiver when you encounter a beautiful sentence or image or landscape, all of it speaks to the body, and often, for me, the awe makes me open up the body again to the bigger world to see more. Thank you so much for these comments and for listening.
Nina
Susie, I have a new goal, to write you a ballet of words that you can dance to in the privacy of your own body, no dads to giggle or question. ;)
Nina and Kimberly, thank you for sharing such a warm, interesting conversation. I welcomed your reminder Nina that the human spirit can only take so much despair. It felt like you were saying to me, "you are not the only one feeling this heaviness but it doesn't have to be that way." With this, and so much else, you are offering a sense of lightness.
I love your focus on beautiful words and what they add to the human experience. I wholeheartedly agree. So often I will read a paragraph or line that stops me in my tracks. What a gift to have been given, this gift of words!
Lastly, I appreciate your lesson about the rhythm of our words. The way you framed it in this conversation was amazing and makes it much easier to hold on to.
Kimberly, you are a rock-star interviewer. Your essence shines through and makes me wish I was curling up on the couch beside you for a cup of tea!
Donna,
Thank you so much for your generous words. I think that with too much despair, the spirit, the will, the energy of vitality (whatever one is comfortable calling it) becomes waterlogged with too much sorrow. It becomes difficult to move or act.
Kimberly is an amazing interviewer--a keen listener and highly intuitive.
Nina
I agree Donna, Nina offers us a sense of beauty, optimism and lightness, even within the difficult subject of climate change. She's a beacon for many of us, if only we could all enroll at Stanford and be her students!
And rock-star, hehe. That's a new one! I'll see if I can find some McJagger pleather pants at the thrift store and wear them around the yard for my hens and cats. :)
Stunning sentences was one of the first things I found on Substack and I loved it. I'm always thinking about the construction and building of meaning through words and sentences, reading back, editing, considering. I love the rhythm and rhyme of prose. So Nina's careful analysis was brilliant. Thanks Nina.
Thanks so much for another fascinating interview Kimberley. (Funnily enough my daughter just lent me Ocean Vuong's book).
Thank you so much, Jonathan! I really feel this is part of the writer's education, and this close looking, this slowing dow,n and understanding a sentence seeps into your writing.
Isn't it wonderful Jonathan! I had no idea how exciting the deconstruction of a sentence could be. I felt her passion on the page but it was especially fun to feel how Nina embodies it, her eyes sparkling and voice lilting as she felt into the rhythm, pulse and song of the Faulkner sentence I shared. So fun to hear your reflection. Thank you for being here.
A wonderful conversation you two. Something that really stood out for me was Nina’s suggestion to just “do something”. I related to that a lot as sometimes doing almost anything feels better than just floating aimlessly. :)
So true Michael. And Nina had concrete thoughts about what that "something" might be. It doesn't mean we all have to run for office and change policy! We can plant gardens, teach children, learn about what's happening locally in our towns and cities. That rallying energy is so important and I especially felt it after reading her collection of stories In this Ravishing World where the earth herself feels buoyed by our efforts.
Yes exactly, we can all find our own special ‘something’ :)
Yes! We each have a unique contribution to help solve this most challenging problem we've ever faced. It won't be one person or one thing.
Thank you both for this captivating conversation, bursting with beauty, sparkling thoughts, and aliveness.
I totally resonate with the experience of creating sentences which come alive. Sentences which don't just convey information through the sequence of words and their meaning (filling the mind with facts) but also the rhythm, pattern, and scanning of a piece of written language which reverberates in the heart.
"my standard is, does it make me feel alive?" you say, Nina.
I love that! And agree wholeheartedly. I feel, the quality of writing you describe, and practice, and teach, is what transforms plain prose into an art form.
Veronika I'm so happy to see you here and feel your overlapping sentiments with Nina. You two are indeed kindred spirits. During our conversation I kept thinking back to your "wild-word-woods" where everything shimmers with life, and more so because of all your deep reflection and study. Nina, I'm certain you will feel the same delight I do when I read Veronika's wordcasts, this recent one especially had me flying: https://substack.com/@veronikabond/p-149846105
Veronika,
Thank you for listening and also for these comments. We are kindred spirits, listening to the sounds and rhythms of words and sentences!
Nina
And you are teaching this, taking language into the realm of music, which is so inspiring.
SUCH an amazing conversation. Wow. Her sense of awe and her take on Heidegger make me want to reread him daily... I'll need the pocket version for my tote!
"And so I was just starting out. I earned my MFA, but no one had taught at that level, the precise, you know, diction, syntax, imagery, sound, rhythm and breaking down all the elements of style, imagery, schemes and tropes. So I kind of went in and taught myself all of it and read as much as I could to figure out grammar and figure out not just grammar because I want, I am fascinated by what grammar can do in terms of generate meaning and sound. So what I'm teaching, I think myself first and then students at the university and now on Substack is how to write from the body. If you generate sound and rhythm, that's what the body feels."
🥰 This speaks to me more than you can know. Writing from the body. That is what I want to feel from an author when I read, and that is what I strive to create when I write.