Over at Best American Poetry This Week!

Between book touring and frantic nonfiction writing, I have been On the Run. But for all this week I'll be posting over at the Best American Poetry blog. Please come visit me!


First up: a glimpse at the woman who made me a poet....

            Red, green, blue horses, I wrote, ride up and down.

            I paused, wondering how to complete my ode to carousels. Up and down, I scribbled a second time. Repetition was poetic, right? Our third-grade teacher circulated the classroom, reading over our shoulders as we hunched over our desks.

            “You,” she picked. “Okay, you. You.”

            With a handful of others I walked down the halls of Haycock Elementary School to the classroom where, for the rest of the year, we would have a weekly poetry class. A round table nearly filled the tiny space. We sat down to wait in our orange plastic chairs.

            A woman threw the door open, swiftly maneuvering her generous hips through the narrow gap between table and wall to claim a roomier corner. Her honey-blond hair was a wave that crested and flipped up at the ends; her eyelids glimmered teal; her perfume bloomed with gardenias. She wasn’t a teacher. She was a force of nature.

            “Hello!” she said. “I am Rose MacMurray. A poet. We are here to write poetry!”

Read the rest here...