This, and my heart besides, and these brief updates:
Brief Update The First: Regular visitors to the blog will know that I do not often post photographs, especially if they happen to include myself. But, if I’ve been photographed with my Ultimate Poetry Hero and Idol, surely this is means for an exception!
Okay, so, obviously, as this was taken outdoors, and we are not separated by a set of stairs or a screen, and she communicated with me verbally rather than jotting down a couplet on a small piece of card stock and sending it to me on a platter with a bud vase and a violet, this isn’t the real Emily Dickinson. But it is the next best thing: the wonderful and gracious Rachel Ochs, who plays Emily Dickinson at the Alabama Book Festival. Many thanks to her for taking a picture with me!
Brief Update the Second: Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa! I mentioned in my last post that my memory of the Putt-Putt Incident was faulty, and it apparently was very faulty indeed, as my parents have informed me. The real story is quite different and infinitely more hilarious. As my mother pointed out, my father really would never have gotten angry if the putt-putt course had involved a windmill or a crouching gorilla or a Tyrannosaurus Rex. See, it seems that we took several trips to Panama City, and there were several putt-putt courses, one of which indeed did involve a windmill and a crouching gorilla and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, the incident described below did not take place at that putt-putt course, but at another, windmill-, gorilla-, and dinosaur-less course. Apparently, the hole in question was a very short, straight shot. I hit the ball once, got angry, threw down my club, and threw a fit. Which leads us to a very different lesson about Emma: Emma tends to be easily frustrated and act like a brat. Which one can’t do in poetry, either.
Brief Update the Third: Today was the last day of my residency at Fews Alternative School. The students gave a reading in the school’s media center, and they did such a great job! I’m incredibly proud of them, and inspired by their dedication and by their willingness to open up, to write, and to find their voices. These kids are on their way to great things, and I’m grateful to have known them!
Emma Bolden is the author of How To Recognize A Lady, a chapbook of poems published as part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press' Quartet Series, and The Mariner's Wife, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press. Her third chapbook, The Sad Epistles, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference and was named a Finalist for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation/Poetry magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in such journals as Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review, Feminist Studies, The Journal, Redivider, The Greensboro Review, and Verse. Her manuscript was a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Prize. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown College, where she also serves as the poetry editor of the Georgetown Review.
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May 16, 2008 at 3:27 am
mariegauthier
As you are sans sleeves, I knew this picture could not have been taken in Amherst! Nice bangs. ;O) Also, nice juxtaposition with the more dramatic bio photo.
Putt-putting is hard. I don’t know why anyone plays once their parents stop taking them. I haven’t been since I was 17 — on a date — see how easy it can be sometimes to know a boy’s not not not for you?
May 19, 2008 at 1:22 am
emmabolden
I need to get the bangs re-cut — they’re not supposed to swoosh!
Putt-putt should probably be banned. I’m surprised there isn’t more violent crime on the putt-putt field.