How does a poem begin?
I used some self-imposed prompts or constraints for a number of the poems in my new collection. A lot of the poems began with a single word and its etymology, which is a theme running through the book. One section, called “Shoebox Photos,” began when my husband’s aunt was looking through old photographs after the death of her father; so many of the people in the pictures were unknown, but already telling me stories. But most of my poems begin with a moment—a dead bird in the grass, the posture of a stranger on the street, the pattern on my baby’s washcloth—that memory or gesture or object becomes a way of expressing a larger experience or idea.
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