A Likely Story, published by
Moon Tide Press
It’s important to
note that A Likely Story, my first
full collection of poetry, is a first book.
Yes, it’s true that I’ve published a chapbook—Balance (White Violet, 2012). But a full
collection is different, especially since I waited my whole life to publish one.
I’ve been writing poetry as a serious pursuit (as serious as
any play can be) since I was a teenager, so why not before now?
I just simply
knew the work was not ready. I was not ready.
I got two degrees in writing—the first at Hollins University
(then, Hollins College), where Richard
H.W. Dillard taught me the craft and he and Dara Weir set me off on the right path, and then, after a few
of the brief turns life threw my way, an MFA at UC Irvine, where I studied with
Charles Wright, Heather McHugh, and James McMichael.
But following that second degree, I didn’t write poetry again for 20 years. Instead, I
got a PhD in Comparative Literature at UC Irvine, writing a dissertation on
Vladimir Nabokov’s literary games, and thereafter settled in to teach writing
and literature as an adjunct in a few different places, as well as being a mom
and a caretaker daughter to two elderly parents.
In 2011, I found myself free—my son pretty much grown, my
job gone, and plenty of time to write.
So write I did. I turned out the three books you see above
in as many years, and also have a manuscript of ekphrastic poems, Together, in my back pocket. I hope it
will be published by next year or so.
A Likely Story is
composed of poems written during many different geological layers of my life,
but I found in all of them a common thread of narrative. So this is the theme
that I have used to construct the book, which is composed of nine different
sections related to the elements or themes relating to narrative, from “Tall
Ones,” to “A Cast of Thousands,” “Location, Location,” etc.
Some poems seemed to belong in a couple of different
sections at once, and so I made these the ones to open or close a particular
section.
The book went through eight different versions. Then a publisher who almost took version
seven told me that many of the poems’ endings were weak. And though it stung, I realized she was right,
especially after another reader told me the same thing.
They may have believed I was not up to the task of doing
anything about this, but I did. In a matter of a month or two, I rewrote many
poems, threw some out, put in new, stronger poems, and created the collection
that now exists.
A funny thing happened during that twenty years I was not
writing poems. I guess all that pent up poem energy made me a better writer,
more confident, more willing to try new things because I have never looked
back.
And I am thankful that people like my friend Marly Youmans,
a writer whom I very much admire, who has been a guide and model for my doings
as a writer, encouraged me to keep on going since I would never be happy unless
I was writing and also very pleased that the poetry community has embraced me
so generously and wholeheartedly.
Sometimes, even when it seems unlikely, a story can have a happy ending
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