Artist Statement

Tillie Olsen said, “It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched.” I was raised in the 50’s as a “good girl,” trying to avoid reality at all costs. It has taken me years to consent to live in the real world. Writers who have helped me along the way have been Yeats, Emily Dickinson, E.B.White, Kenneth Graham, Alice Walker, Richard Wilbur, Linda Pastan, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, and Naomi Shihab Nye.

 

I grew up on the cadences of the King James Bible and around grown-ups who could still recite poems they learned in school. Words were important and powerful. I thought if I could just find the right words, people would take me seriously and do what needed to be done. It didn't work, but it has given me much joy comfort as I try to learn the difference between what I can do and what I must accept.

 

In middle age, I realized that my penchant for expecting the worst had blinded me to my capacity for joy, I found poets to show the way. Barbara Hamby’s “Thus Spake the Mockingbird” was a revelation. Jack Gilbert’s “A Brief for the Defense” became a survival manifesto, and Ross Gay taught me that actively seeking delight was a worthy occupation. Every year or two, I read again “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Wind in the Willows.”

I lived my first 60 years in Texas where people talked in colorful idioms; I moved to Kansas with its own sensibility, and now I live in Nashville. As an octogenarian, I see how unlovely and lonely life can be. Fortunately, I have family members consenting to their own baptisms, and I live in a community of cohousers and friends I've gathered over the years. I need other people, but I also need that space in the morning when I can be alone with a Presence who blesses me and helps me find the words to express it.