When you showed up drunk as hell, humming
tunelessly to yourself, and slumped against
the auditorium's faux-wood paneling  — when
you fumbled in the pockets of your coat,
fished out a cigarette, brought it to your lips,
then, realizing for the first time where you were,
tossed it away and said Fuck it loud enough
that everyone turned in their seats and a friend
elbowed me and asked if I knew you — I shook
my head and spent the next hour wondering why
I was so glad you came. You, who slept
each night in your battered van, who skipped
meetings and lied to your sponsor, who still
called your ex-wife every day, restraining order
be damned. You shouldn't have been there
either: a hundred yards was the agreement
after you gathered all the meds in the house
into a shoebox and threatened to take them.
You had come regardless. You were there.
And I was there. And when I walked the stage
you hollered my name with a kind
of wild conviction, then said it a second time,
less convinced, and I thought of that night
when the cops came and you, unashamed
of the fuss you caused, of your desperate,
public struggle for happiness, kissed me
on the head — once, twice — and went quietly.
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Color exterior head shot of poet Paige Lewis
"Talking with Paige Lewis"

"Once I’m up, I make some tea and while the water’s boiling, I pick out a dozen poetry books from the shelves and place them next to my notebook at the table. Then I drink my tea, flip through the books, and write until the afternoon."

via THE RUMPUS
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Cover of Jane Mead's book, To The Wren: Collected and New Poems
What Sparks Poetry:
Jenny Browne on Jane Mead’s “The Lord and The General Din of the World”

"Can a description of an empty bottle of blue cheese dressing change your life? I wouldn’t have wagered it, but I never forgot that “steady grating” and how Mead’s poem pointed the way forward. Because I didn’t know you could put stuff like that in a poem, by which I mean the stuff my actual life felt made of, let alone hold it right next to God, whoever she was. I had thought being a poet meant I had to learn to write (and see) like Rilke, but now I thought maybe I might try to be (and listen) like Jane Mead."
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