"One day at a time"

I woke up on the morning of May 20 in Santa Fe and strained to remember what was on the agenda for the new day. The memory of Jeff chanting "THE POETS ARE COMING THE POETS ARE COMING!" the previous night reminded me that the poets--Carol Moldaw and Arthur Sze-- were in fact coming to speak with us, and also reminded me that I had put off the reading of their work until that morning. After a quick breakfast I decided to face my shameful procrastination and read the selected poems that were assigned to us. I started with Carol's poem entitled Summer Sublet which abstractly describes some of her memories and struggles from her early years in Santa Fe. I immediately fell in love with Carol's poetry. After reading the remaining selections, including the impressive Lightning Field, I identified the beauty in Carol's work as her attention to both subjective and objective elements and her ability to weave them together so skillfully. I began to get really excited when I remembered that the talented artist that I had just discovered was going to be arriving at our Santa Fe house in just a few minutes. When the poets arrived, she was everything that I had imagined. Carol and her husband Arthur read a few poems aloud to us and engaged us in conversation. Many of us had questions for the couple and we discussed things such as the balance of community and individuality in Santa Fe, the influx of the art community since the 1970s, the importance of physical environment to identity, and the sensuality of words, along with various other topics. Our time with the poets seemed to fly by but we had some great conversations. Although my procrastination was unintentional, I feel lucky to have gotten to fall in love with a poet's work and meet that same poet all in about an hour. I was able to find a collection of Carol's newer poems called So Late, So Soon at Collected Works, a great local bookstore near the plaza. Meeting with Carol and Arthur was very interesting and rewarding and I feel privileged for having the opportunity.

Monica Chatterton