What Sparks Poetry a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our occasional series, Building Community, we spotlight connections between our work on the page and our work in the community.
Forget about smoking weed
                with soccer players in the woods
                                 near the Methodist church

while I said Hail Marys
                and kept watch. Shifted my weight from hip
                                 to hip as if to ask, Is this attractive?

Waited for feedback
                from the shadows. Forget Mom and Dad,
                                 you’d say. They’re some kind of crazy.

We repacked bags with the seasons.
                Buried them in the backs of our closets.
                                 Clothing and essentials in case.

Thought one morning I’d find you
                long gone since
                                 ours was a house of exits.

But when, in my sixteenth year, you watched
                my slight frame get smaller
                                 as the car pulled away

from the boarding school parking lot,
                I knew what you knew: the difference
                                 between not speaking and letting something go

unspoken. Between what actually happened
                and the mythologies we tell our husbands decades
                                 later. We say, Mom wigged out. We don’t say

the institution’s name. We can’t say,
                That was the year we saw Dad pull the trigger.
                                 I said, You’re such a bitch

when I meant Remember.
                You were there.
                                 You walked beside me each day.
from the book HOW TO PROVE A THEORY / Washington Writers' Publishing House
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What Sparks Poetry:
Nicole Tong on Reaching Incarcerated Scholars

"Programs like 'Poetry Lives Here' are the result of a series of yeses and a village invested in a common goal, group, and ethos. Poetry by living poets reminds us that we live in a world shared by others in real time, and that especially matters during liminal periods marked by uncertainty and isolation. I’m inspired by people—JDC scholars, my community college students, women and children living in shelters— who navigate these waters—however they can—and (to borrow from the great Lucille Clifton) manage to 'sail through this to that'."
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Deal to Merge Two Publishing Giants Is on the Verge of Collapse

"Penguin Random House’s deal to buy Simon & Schuster, a rival publisher, is close to collapsing after Simon & Schuster’s parent company decided to allow the purchase agreement to expire, according to a person familiar with the decision who spoke anonymously to discuss confidential deliberations."

via The New York Times
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