Up: [[Personal Essay and Memoir]] Course: True Confessions with Alison Luterman on 27Powers Created: 2024-05-15 Telling keeps us safe. Details increase vulnerability because details bring the intimacy, bringing the reader into the experience. I was relieved to hear that Alison has to consciously insert details into her poems and essays. She doesn’t notice them, doesn’t notice her environment in general, lives very much in her head during an experience and then has to go back and revise by putting in the details. Not all details matter, of course. It has to be a detail that either forwards the emotional tone of the piece or contributes to the arc of the story. Ellen Bass said in her class that we have to ask of any detail if it is both vivid and essential. It needs to be both. There’s a place for telling as well as showing. See [[Essays Need to Show and Tell]]. Alison says she likes a high/low combination. Just as in fashion we can have ripped jeans paired with a silk shirt, a text can be very plain spoken and have one dazzling metaphor that really speaks.