Here is the recipe: go to elementary school. Attend classes, learn as you are able, sit in your seat, be surprised on the day the teacher says, “Write a story.” Put pencil to paper and find that arm connects to brain seamlessly. Characters, setting, and plot rush onto the page in a torrent until the…
Author: Margaret Coombs
Poetry, curiosity, place.
A Student's First Book of Poems
In my poet’s biography, I usually state that I began writing after retiring from library work. That is not quite true. Like many book lovers, I wrote poems in college. In 1974-75 the poets I met in Literatura Hispanoamericana inspired me. How could anyone remain unaffected by José Martí’s “Dos Patrias?”* Even though my Spanish…
The Living Female Poet: Diane Wakoski
Diane Wakoski gave a poetry reading in Madison at the Good Karma Coffee Shop in 1975 or 1976. I can’t find confirmation of this, not even in my diaries. But I remember it clearly. Here was the female poet who lived. I’m sure I arrived after working an evening shift at the H.C. White College…
Making a Promise to Robert Hayden
I told him that I liked his poems and would look for his book. He said, “It’s not very well known. You probably won’t be able to find it around here.” Mr. Hayden spoke with me after I stopped in front of him on my way out the door. For minutes after his reading, I…
Meet Margaret Coombs
Margaret Coombs is a young woman who moved to Austin and wrote every night on a manual typewriter on her kitchen table in a one-bedroom cockroach-infested apartment on Blanco Street in Austin, Texas. Margaret Coombs began writing in a diary at the age of twenty when she traveled to Mexico for a semester with a…