Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Grace Paley Film


My friend, the author Leora Skolkin-Smith is in this amazing film that is now in production, Grace Paley: Selected Shorts, about the great Grace Paley. Lilly Rivlin , the filmmaker, followed Grace around and there are beautiful shots of Grace's last weeks. It's unsparing in showing Grace in her cancer, but what is remarkable is to see this little woman talking about the open fields of the farmhouse up there in Vermont, and how she named all her flowers after friends because she was so forgetful. Leora was published by Paley by Glad Day Books, but better than that, she was loved like a daughter by Paley. The film is incredible. What Grace taught was that writing comes from our lives, it pulls out from our sorrows and expresses what life really is.

Here's an amazing poem from Grace's last days.

"Anyone who gets to be
eighty years old says thank you
to the One in charge then immediately begins to complain why
were these years such an historical mess?"


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