It is thrilling enough to have my debut book of poetry, Sisters in Time, become available for preorder from Finishing Line Press, but I am further blessed to have my poem "A Lesson in Conducting" published in the distinguished literary journal Tupelo Quarterly. It is included with three others, each of which is accompanied by a deeply insightful lyric essay by Tupelo Press publisher and artistic director, Jeffrey Levine, in "Within a Held Breath: A Quartet of Poems with Lyric Responses." I am honored to have my work taken so seriously, and to have it keep company with work by three very accomplished poets: Carrie Olivia Adams, Sam Magavern, and Dawn McGuire. Thank you to Jeffrey and to Tupelo Quarterly editor Kristina Marie Darling.
I am fascinated not only to read the poems by the others in the quartet but absorb Jeffrey's enlightening thoughts about the role of the suspended moment in our work and in the art of poetry itself. As Jeffrey writes:
"Every poem in this remarkable quartet stages a moment prior to doing....Taken together, each poem listens for the moment before speech or song—before command, before praise, before knowledge hardens into authority. They linger in thresholds: the lifted hand that withholds the downbeat, the cave of the body thinking itself, the forty days before weather breaks, the hour before work when the dead arrive talkative, the instant a child sees the helmet and understands too much. What binds the poems is not subject but stance: an ethics of attention that refuses haste, mastery, or false clarity."
https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/uncategorized/within-a-held-breath-a-quartet-of-poems-with-lyric-responses-introduction-by-jeffrey-levine/