Unveiling Heartbreak and Healing: Brenda Miller Reveals the Secrets Behind Her Powerful New Memoir.
RP: So, let’s talk about Love You, Bye, which has a lot of essays cartwheeling into each other, but I want to talk about the poems, too. It felt a little bit like you would write an essay, and then at the end, there was a voice in you that said, I’m not done talking about this, but prose can’t do it the way poetry can. I don’t know if you planned it that way?
BM: I was not seeing the poems and essays together at all. It was the editor who did that. So, originally, I was working on two different projects. A lot of times during the caretaking journey that I went through with my dad, you can only write a line or two. I’d walk over to the nursing home, and as I was walking home, certain images would stay with me from my visit, and I felt compelled to write them down. I wanted to remember what happened that day, because no one else was going to. So those little pieces became a little manuscript all on their own. Then, the essays about caring for my mom came later, so I also had a full essay manuscript. I had been thinking about the editor Mary Bernard, who I’ve worked with at Skinner House a few times, and as I was thinking about all this, Mary emails me out of the blue, asking if I had anything new she could look at.
