i was tagged by kate...

to answer the poetry meme.

the first poem i remember reading was...

something i don't remember. but i must have had some sense of what poetry was in order to know that the thing i'd written on a piece of pink notepaper when i was about five was indeed a poem. i don't have any memory of what i wrote; the memory is of the careful way i carried myself around the house after it was written, and of the sense i had that those words laid end to end were mysteriously and infinitely valuable.

i was forced to memorize numerous poems in school and...

actually the only forced memorizing going on was over bible verses. i had an amazing memorizing ability as a child; to everyone's delight i memorized whole chunks of the bible. as a kindergardener i delivered a 20 minute long speech about the nativity without notes and with laryngitis and received my first and last standing ovation. granted it took me months under the impatient tutelage of my stepmother, who would record my voice for hours every day on a machine with two reels.

i just think it's too bad i didn't have more imaginative educators. the entire 13th chapter of first corinthians down pat and not one poem...

my first "publication" was in...

the lanakila baptist school newsletter. the poem was titled "why?".

i read poetry because...

it thrills me.

A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is…

max ernst's "the great uninhabitable house". it still takes my breath away after all these years.

i find poetry in...

everywhere there's a rhythm or an interruption of that rhythm.


the last time i heard poetry was...

at line-up at work. the chef was explaining that baby fennel is more potent than adult fennel, but he didn't know why. it made me think immediately of baby rattlesnakes being more poisonous than adult rattlers, because they don't know how to regulate their venom. when the interconnection between unlike things makes itself apparent, i hear poetry. that's why it is a permanent sound.

i didn't answer all the questions and i don't know who i should tag. i was never good at tag. too slow of a runner.