I’ve been reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the last novel Shirley Jackson wrote before her death in 1965, and thought I had remembered someone saying her agoraphobia was the thing that inspired her to write so much about creepy houses. (Have you read The Haunting of Hill House? Go read it if you haven’t, preferably late at night and under the covers, with a flashlight.) So I toddled on over to…

Saint Flannery hear my plea May your ears listen to my supplication My sentences won’t do my will They sprawl like unruly vegetables                      Weed and fertilize. Prune and watch for caterpillars. The workshop rise up against me. They laugh at my moral endings.                      The soul to achieve grace              …