I look back on my earlier poetry career when I was so out of it as far as awards, grants, books, etc. How excited I was to publish a poem! How excited I was to go to a poetry festival; I can only describe it as magical. There was as if God was in the room with me when I went to a poetry reading.
I was inspired by everything. I was overwhelmed to meet Li-Young Lee and I would hold poets up up up in the air and how the glistened in the sun… There is a part of me that wishes I could return to that magical element of poetry, but with everything, you grow, you learn more, and you come to realize what looks so beautiful behind the glass—pearls, feather boas, leather bound books—can lose a bit of its shine when you are right next to it, realizing they used faux-pearls, the boa costs $6.95 at Spencer's, and the books? They aren't even real.
