Sherry Chandler

For about a year now I’ve been whining about certain aspects of my life that I need to change but somehow I haven’t been able to shake myself out of old patterns. Then I got news that change — in my work life at any rate — is likely to be thrust upon me.

Did I embrace that opportunity to change? No, I got physically ill for a couple of days. Change, even for the better, is frightening.

And then, I turned a page in Molly Peacock’s Cornucopia and found the poem “That Leaf.” I was comforted.

It was one of those serendipitous moments. Another was following a discussion line at The Waters and finding Jude Goodwin’s link to this site that features Molly and several others reading “That Leaf.” (Click the images and then click the name of the poet.)

It was great to hear Molly read the poem but it is also great to hear others read it, to hear how a poem changes with different voices, how each reader makes it his/her own. Always the same words, always different.

A couple of last words (I think) about the West Chester Poetry Conference: An article in the Philadelphia Enquirer with a link to a reading by Sandy Van Doren, whom I met in the Molly Peacock workshop. (The article is entitled “For Serious Poets…” but I remember laughing a lot.)

And some pictures at Toni Clark’s blog. Ann Higgins, Sandra Van Doren, Holly Woodward, and Mike Riley were in the Peacock workshop with me, Lisa Barnett was my gentle and accommodating suite mate.

Unfortunately, the picture of me seems to catch me in a moment of stowing food away in my cheek pouches. And it is true that I spilled red wine on my white pants a moment thereafter, but Elizabeth Cooper whisked out a little stick of something from Tide and made the spots disappear again. Great shoes and prepared for spills. A wonderful woman, that Elizabeth.