A renowned local painter, Martha Visser't Hooft, said: "I paint to keep from leaping out of high windows."  The same can be said of my writing poetry.  Or, as William Carlos Willliams observed:  "By writing I rescue myself."  I was very young when I began listening to poems, because my parents read to me every day, mostly poetry.  I was writing poems by 8 or 9.  I believed in fairies, elves, goblins --- but not in dragons or monsters. Nor did I believe in gods. In fact, I knew early on that what I pretended existed did not in reality exist.  Skeptical from the start, as a small child I still took paper straws from the kitchen, snuck into the garden at dusk to poke them into openings by the cellar windows, whispering to the fairies hiding there. I've always been comfortable with ambiguity. My grandmother said you should memorize poems so if you ever go blind you will have language to recite to yourself in the dark. That seemed logical and I did. My father said if something dreadful goes terribly wrong in your life, immerse yourself in Shakespeare. Life will become a bit more endurable.  He was right.  My mother sang to me at night, folk songs and the Marseillaise. So I sang to all my children and  grandchildren.  My favorite people are two year olds but I also cherish newborns and teenagers. Teaching poetry workshops for the past 37 years is my avocation. To hear a sixteen year old read aloud one of her poems, carefully revised and originally expressed, a poem I've helped her to realize, makes me grateful that poetry is my daily companion.

 

--Ansie Baird