Writing Models

Dear Mary, 

Your words are always present in my teaching and in my thinking.  Your poems were among my first writing models, and The Swamp Cabbage is one of the first poems I give students to read.  "What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty" is a mantra when I avoid writing about what's unpleasant, and, when I am trying too hard, I say, "the soft animal of the body."  You have helped me love the world and be grateful.   

Many healing wishes,

Ava Leavell Haymon