The Assemblage Letter #80
Love
Welcome to this week’s newsletter from Assemblage. These newsletters go out every Friday to highlight some of our top essays from the past week. As always, these are all friend links, so anyone can view them. Please click through on the ones that resonate and read the whole essay.
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” — Victor Hugo
Assemblage is now an essay-only publication, with all of our poetry being published at Loose Words, but we will continue to feature published poetry here from our archives.
Featured Writer
Each week we feature one of our writers and several of their essays (or past poems) on the homepage underneath the Featured Essays, Featured Poems, and Notes From the Editor sections. This week our Featured Writer is Lance Baker. Lance is a fellow observer on the journey through life, trying to cultivate a deeper way of being in the world.
Collection
Collections are groupings of essays or past poems with an overall theme. You can find Collections on the homepage underneath the Highlighted Essays, Highlighted Past Poems, Notes From the Editor, and Featured Writer sections.
Love features 8 different works from 8 different writers around this theme. This section is a great way to get acquainted with multiple works around one theme, as well as to find writers you haven’t read before or ones you shouldn’t miss. Take a look at our Collection this week and see what you may have missed.
Love features one work each from Agnes Louis, Melissa Kerman, Kara B. Imle, Tania Caan, Pandora Domeyko, Jessica Lovejoy, Carrie Wynn, and Niki Marinis.
Highlighted Essays From Last Week
A Word About THAT Photo of Me by Bonnie Barton
“I knew I was smart. (Well, smart-ish.) I knew I was overall a good (if quirky) human. I also knew there was a lot of work ahead. I had to face my worst nightmare head-on. There are no shortcuts to that kind of work. I knew I had to walk through the pain and hope I’d get to the other side.”
The Meaning of Life Is That It Stops by Jeff Barton
“As much as it is valued and preached, mindfulness and meditation are not valuable for many whose moments consist of constant noise in their brains. We’ve tried almost everything to get it to stop, including meditation and mindfulness. It’s certainly not for lack of trying that this problem exists. Being in the moment itself is the problem, not the solution.”
The 5:00 a.m. Club is Bullsh*t by Iva Ursano
“I think everyone should be open-minded enough to try new things, especially if it’s a path to success or to reaching your desired goals but…don’t kill yourself to get there. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not for you. Don’t force things.”
The Ones Who Remind Us To Feel by Megan Minutillo
“It’s easy to think that those who create the very things that help you unwind from your stresses every day are somehow out of touch. But really, they are the ones who remind us of what it is to feel. They pick up the pieces of broken hearts and make a new mosaic of dreams. They make others feel seen, and heard, and loved.”
Highlighted Past Poems
Our highlighted past poems are a weekly homage on our homepage to our poets who wrote for us when we still published poetry at Assemblage. Although we are essay-only now, we love to feature a round-up of past poems for our readers. This week we have poems from Juliette Roanoke, Jonathan Greene, Dionne Charlet, Bradley J Nordell, and Sana Rose.
