Second Launch

I'm so grateful for the generous efforts of the folks at the Occidental Center for the Arts and fellow poets Clara Rosemarda and Else Rosager. The book launch in July was great fun, and was attended by a good number of friends and family.

This weekend marks another launch, this time for Sonoma County Poet Laureate Katherine Hasting's edited anthology, Digging Our Poetic Roots.  I hope to see more friends and fellow poets there, too.

In the meantime, I am continuing work on my MFA. I've been blessed to have wonderful workshop leaders and poets as advisors, thus far: Marvin Bell, Eduardo Corral, Kwame Dawes, Ellen Bass and Vievee Francis. I've also taken classes with Sandra Alcosser and Joseph Millar. What a fantastic, talented, supportive group.

But the work is up to me. I feel like I've only dipped my toe in the water of poetry, when really I want to be swimming laps. What keeps me from the work if not old habits of self-doubt and putting too many other things first? I know I am not alone in this. But I also know I would not be alone in blooming late, and changing my life. Thank you, George Elliot, for the sentiment: "It is never to late to be what you might have been."