Mary Jo Bang (author of Apology For Want, Louise In Love, The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans, & Elegy) and Marilynne Robinson (author of Mother Country, The Death of Adam, Housekeeping, Gilead, & Home). Fearless leaders. Geniuses of the written word.
Mary Jo teaches the poetry seminar I'm attending this semester. Marilynne's my workshop leader/instructor. Mary Jo's class is all about the "vexed, interior" voices that crowd confessional poetry. Marilynne is a gentle, fierce, discerning, funny, empathic teacher who gives specific yet somehow deeply philosophical feedback. She also has an old, small dog that attends workshop and will snap at you with saurian ferocity if you get between it and anything edible. This lends an element of unease to workshop, if nothing else does.
Like Marilynne, Mary Jo is also down-to-earth. She'll tell you about her years being a physician's assistant, before she decided to try writing poems, what mechanical Missouri is like in the summer, and her take on existence as a photographer/visual artist. She's also a wonderful listener. At a potluck, she helped Janelle & me wrangle Eleanor, who was hell-bent on climbing into a large galvanized bin of icy Coca-Colas. "Parenthood is sacrificial, isn't it?" she said.
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