answer to the grad school application request: please describe your interest in poetry

It seems strange to say that I have an interest in poetry; I have an interest in botany. It is something outside of me and I can choose to pursue botanical lore and milieu at my leisure. I can choose to learn more about the life cycle of bryophytes if I want to, or I can put the magnifying lens away, satisfied to have seen plenty of gametophytes for one day. Botany is my past time; it is a quiet retreat. I can go to it when poetry is making me crazy and it is always a sane endeavor.

I do not have an interest in poetry—poetry is a part of me, like my hand. I cannot choose to pursue poetry at my leisure or simply put the book away, satisfied to have learned enough for one day. It is not a retreat, but rather, it is what I live, see, hear, dream, and struggle every moment, and it is very rarely quiet.

Sometimes, I like to think that I write to keep myself sane, but the wild lexis of a poet’s brain affords me no such solace. Instead, I “labor by singing light” because I must, and then take a walk with the trilliums because I can.