I have always thought of my own writing life as something intensely private—a love affair with language born of a fascination with both (let’s face it) my personal psyche and Life—which is conducted in the still of night, within a quiet bubble. And yet I’ve been blessed with this employment that upholds and informs and expands this private life of mine, and thus I’ve been privileged to witness, all around me, year after year, this lovely, ever-changing and yet unfailing, pattern of—well, of bubbles, overlapping mine and each other’s and reflecting the shimmer of the world.

 

I teach creative writing here at Kent State, as I have for the better part of twenty years, and for seven of those years (1997-2004) I served as Assistant to the Coordinator of the Wick Poetry Program, i.e., I worked with Maggie, who, God bless her, plucked me out of the crowd and brought me into the office, and through Wick I've met a bounty of Word lovers, of all ages and stations and persuasions, who have sustained and propelled my private life in ways I never will be able to articulate—although I could tell you story after story, of the one heart, the many distinctive voices.  

 

I am thrilled—alternately overwrought and becalmed—to have spent this past year as the Wick Poetry 25^th-Anniversary Specialist, whose job has been to renew contact with many beloveds. Here I offer thanks to the Wick family, and thanks to the family that is Wick Poetry—for your words, which speak of mysteries, which make me laugh and make me cry and remind me I’m alive, happy to be here, with you.