SOUL MOUNTAIN SPRING 2009

Best greetings to Soul Mountaineers and friends of Soul Mountain. As I write this, spring is beginning to unfold here in Connecticut. Forsythia, daffodils: “Nature’s first green is gold.” Walking today on the lane through the woods to the river, I saw a feather dangling at the end of a branch near a fork in a bush which cradled the delicate framework of an unfinished nest.

Here’s what’s been happening here: After our winter closure, during which I enjoyed a Lannan Writing Residency Fellowship in Marfa, Texas, I opened Soul Mountain again on March 12. My friends who have stepped in to host for me while I’ve been away this spring have been Bessy Reyna, Kate Rushin, and Leslie McGrath. I owe each of them a bailout-sized debt of gratitude.

Thanks to my surrogate hosts, I was able to maintain a full schedule of readings. In March I was a Nate C. Roberson Distinguished Professor with the Science and Society program at Emory University, and flew from Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale to read at Broward County Community College. From there to Los Angeles, where I did an AWP Benefit reading at The Pilgrim School, then read in San Clemente, then flew to San Francisco to be a keynote speaker at the “Reading the World” conference on multicultural literature children and young adults at the University of San Francisco. Then came the grand opening, in Amherst, of the Dickinson feature in the NEA’s “Big Read” program. Then an introduction at the 92nd St. Y, which turned into a brief stand-in reading when the featured reader (Natasha Trethewey) got stranded in an airport by a big storm (I told my Facebook friends I felt like Marilyn Nelson being asked to step in for Beyonce!). Then two days in residence at Sarah Lawrence College; readings at the College of St. Rose, in Albany, NY; at the Newburyport Literary Festival in Newburyport, NY; and at the closing of the Contemplative Heart of Education Conference in Amherst, MA.

Gracias, hermanas!

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