Web of Iron

Mary Karr is a great writer. A poet. I'm reading her memoir "Cherry,"now. Beautifully done. She perfectly evokes a time and place now long gone: late sixtes/early seventies in rural Texas.

Her use of language transports you. You enter another consciousness, another world. You see the outlines of your world too, even though all the particulars of your early life are so different.

Mary comes across as a tough cookie, a hard case, a brilliant girl destined to escape. She's a sensitive soul, with a "deepened heart," deepened by suffering. She knows things. You learn.

She is also a prodigious reader and she references some other great writers too...

"Time's march is a web of causes and effects, and asking for any gift of mercy, however tiny it might be, is to ask that a link be broken in that web of iron, ask that it be already broken. No one deserves such a miracle." - Jorge Luis Borges