Happiness Ruined Everything

"One of the strange joys of being in love with someone is how happiness ruined everything. No more courting the dark. I've always worn my own darkness and haven't tried-I hope I haven't tried-pretending that it doesn't exist. It feels odd to identify an experience because of how happy it made me feel. Except, of course, when it comes to love. But even then, even at love, I'm wary when its happiness comes skipping along into the writing. I've never understood the impulse to write out of happiness. I'm a happy person and a funny person, but I'm not a happy writer or a funny writer. I don't believe that a piece of writing has to be sad, but it does-at least for me-have to insist on acknowledging a shadow. It has to face something that a good cop would call evidence."

Some of these essays appeared, at times in different form, in the following publications: SPIN, Poetry, Slice, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares Blog, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, & FENCE.

Author: Michael Klein
Publisher: Galileo Press
Published: 02/03/2026
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.00w x 0.51d
ISBN: 9780913123546

About the Author
Klein, Michael: - Michael Klein is the author of six books of poetry and a five-time finalist and two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award. He's also the author of two books of autobiography and his work has appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Tin House, FENCE, and many other publications. He has been a member of the writing faculty at Goddard College MFA Program for Writers, Sarah Lawrence College, Binghamton University, and Hunter College, as well as more than two decades of teaching summers at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

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