Poet Ralph Angel once said to a student: “I’m not interested in the story of my life. I’m interested in the fact of my life. The fact of my reality…any poet worth her salt…deals with their shit directly.” In an interview with poet Gregory Orr, Krista Tippett said, “To talk about poetry is to talk […]
On Home
In his book, Home: A Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynski says, “Before the idea of the home as the seat of family life could enter the human consciousness, it required the experience of both privacy and intimacy, neither of which had been possible in the medieval hall.” The first time I encountered the […]
On Between
It’s January 2020 and there’s no shortage of “decade in review” lists. I scanned USA Today‘s 10 Lists over 10 years to get my first taste of the past decade. I’m not quite there yet–the full decade-long look back. When I turned thirty, it took me until thirty-one to grasp that I was no longer […]
On Threshold
If memory serves, I have never written a holiday poem. I associate lightheartedness with holiday poems; if you know my work, you know I am not a lighthearted poet. And for reasons I won’t get into, holidays haven’t inspired me. But this year, prompted by an upcoming Christmas party with my writing group, I challenged myself […]
On Little Wins
[When I started this blog back in 2014, I wrote about little wins. After a few years of practice and perspective, it makes sense to revisit the subject .] The 2008 recession hit my family hard. We were living in Wilmington, North Carolina, a coastal tourist city. My husband-to-be and I were planning a wedding. […]
On Type II Fun
Years ago, when I trained in kung fu, I didn’t have the words to accurately explain the experience. If you saw my face during class, I didn’t look like I was having an ounce of fun. And in the moment, I often wasn’t; I was exhausted and in pain. But by the end (and especially […]
