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Wagoner is a good find :). As a creative writer yourself, you might enjoy his one-act play "First Class," which dramatizes the first day in Theodore Roethke's poetry seminar. It's a gripping meditation on the creative process.

Also love your analogy of "dragging the gut," as we called it in Montana, to scrolling. Back in those days I was still shut up in my family's religious bunker, so did not engage in many social functions beyond church. I don't think I regret missing prom or cruising, but I do regret missing that sense of belonging to my generation. For me, Tracy Chapman's "New Beginning" brings back vivid memories of Nebraska -- my first days as a graduate student -- and of the long drive from Troy, Montana, across South Dakota, and down to Lincoln.

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Missing the sense of belonging to your generation—what an interesting way of saying it. My family lived for a year in Ecuador and when we came back to the US and I started 8th grade, I felt like I’d missed a decade, like a time traveler sent into the future.

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