Soul Mountain Retreat # 13

On Wednesday, Rosemary Starace drove down from Pittsfield, Massachusetts to have lunch with me. I showed her around Soul Mountain, then we drove to Old Saybrook for lunch at an outdoor cafe where we both picked up a bit of a tan sitting in the brilliant sun. I met Rosemary on the WOM-PO (Women's Poetry) Listserv. She's a visual artist turned poet, and she has been instrumental in putting the WOM-PO anthology into physical form. I've proposed a panel for next year's AWP on the creation of this collaborative anthology in cyberspace and have actually been trying to meet as many members of the editorial group in person as possible. It turned out that we have many things in common, not the least of which is the art backgrounds we bring to writing. Rosemary developed her work as an artist when she attended the New York Feminist Art Institute. She told me their motto was "Where artmaking arises from self-understanding and content inspires form." She's taken several writer's workshops with Jane Hirshfield, one at Tassajara. We both have the Tassajara bread book, and shared that memory as well as many others about our journeys in art, cooking, and poetry. It was good to meet a soul mate, and I bought a box of paints on our walk around Old Saybrook.