maps + poetry

So many things have happened in the last, oh, nearly-a-year.  I went quiet.  I called it hibernation.  I knit a lot, learned to spin, learned to dye yarn with things I foraged on the bluffs.  I started watching M*A*S*H while I sewed together squares of horses and butterflies together for my daughter's quilt and tried to understand how I could be so hooked on a show that was so awfully sexist.  I went on a poetry retreat with women poets living around Minnesota and was astounded by talent.  I launched a few issues of Tinderbox and managed to love reading these poems while being incapable of writing any for myself.  I met Claudia Rankine.  I did a reading in a beer co-op and another with Maeve's reading series.

Not one day passed that I didn't think, Where oh where, for the love of all that's holy, where! have you gone?

I don't know why it hides and I don't know what the trigger to re-enter is.  The last time, it was an email in which a mother was talking about discussing Joyce at the dinner table with her junior-in-high-school son.  It made me think of myself, how I imagined a life full of books and reading and talking about reading.

This time, what could it have been--  AWP was approaching and then what?  I was thinking about not even registering because my brain wasn't in the place it needed to be in.  I knew I was reading for my press, but that was off-site.  Something got me excited about language and now I am back, full-throttle, my needles in some basket, my books heftier in my brain.

I don't know why these selves cannot co-exist.  But if I'm passionate about one, I'm all in, and the other collects dust.  And while I love the fiber--the wool and the dye pots full of sumac--this is the realm I feel most content.  So hello poems and essays and whatnot.  I'm here to read you and maybe write a bit myself.