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