Last night we talked about the fire within poets, the desire which pushes us to write. It was a very interesting discussion. Elizabeth spoke about one of her best friends, who always won awards for her writing, who was the person who was suppose to grow up to be the poet.

The thing was she didn’t have the fire. It was possible for her not to write so she stopped. I understand this. I love to paint but I don’t need to paint. It does not make me crazy if I don’t paint. Yet you do not want to be in the same room with me when I haven’t written. It's not pretty.

It is my fire. I think writers have a lot of different combinations of burning. I have a friend who blows me away with the amount of work she produces and yet she has no desire to be published. I don't think I ever understood this but I am beginning to realize lately that everyone has their own unique journey.

Not all poets have the desire to be read by other people and I don’t think you need that to be a great poet. Emily Dickenson didn’t. She had only the desire to write. A person who has a fire to be read does not put thier poems in a box. It is not possible.

I have a fire to be read. There is something that happens to me when I read in front of people, when I realize the whole room in breathing in, when I am breathing in, that we are in this moment, in a space I’ve created. To be honest sometimes that is even better than the feeling of nailing a poem. And nailing a poem is damn good.

One of the most important things I think I heard last night is that Teresa Ballard is never going to arrive anywhere. Even if I get everything I want, if I win Yale before I am forty I am still going to want something else. I am still going to continue on this journey. And oddly enough that is comforting. I don’t have to wait for something to happen to make me the writer I see in my head. I just get to be her.