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| Phyllis: I was
born
in Elizabeth, New Jersey. According to my parents' report, I began
writing poems at the age of four. When in third grade I won the
Vail-Deane
School's poetry contest in the Lower School Division, poet Leoni Adams who had judged all Lower, Middle and Upper School entries, observed
that
I was the one student likely to become a poet when I grew up. I grew up. I figured that if I wanted to write poetry, I'd better prepare myself for the sort of job which would allow me time to do so-college teaching. Consequently I got a B.A. in English Literature at Connecticut College, an M.A. in English at Duke University, with a thesis on "Sir Philip Sidney and the Emblem Writers," and a PhD. in English at the University of Wisconsin, with a thesis on "Yeats' Dramatic Lyric." Meanwhile I got married to a genial geophysicist named John Rose, ("How shall I tell the shapely change that fell on us as we embraced") who for his PhD. was measuring the shape of the Earth with a gravity meter. To contribute to the support of my husband and three sons-Mead, Willie, and John-and to pay for nursery school and baby sitters while my husband was circling the globe, I taught the usual combination of Freshman Composition and Sophomore Literature courses in the University of Wisconsin Extension Division. Hard Times. I nearly went bananas. But when I approached the University Medical School needing psychiatric help, I was told, "You seem to be holding up." Maybe. Barely. Eventually I did go crazy for a while. I received my PhD. and had a post-doctoral daughter, Katherine. ("I have one daughter and three sons whose lives are my solace.") I continued to teach. Graduate School is a famous killer of marriages. John and I got divorced, and, equipped with a PhD, I moved to Hawaii where I taught in the University of Hawaii English Department. Along the road I got married again, raised my children as well as I could, all four of whom have turned out fine, inaugurated the Creative Writing Poetry Program, received a teaching award (Danforth Associate for the "spiritual quality" of my teaching) that provided the money with which I initiated Haku Mele, the first Poets in the Schools program in the United States, and published five books of poetry. I also was honored to receive the Hawaii Award for Literature for 1995. I spent the money on a wonderful painting by Barbara Allen whom I met at Yaddo. I retired from teaching at the University of Hawaii as early as possible and moved to Albuquerque, where I felt more at home, because, as my neighbor-landlady Maxine pointed out, the desert and the weather offered a harsher,more varied and demanding environment for the hardy spirit than lush, luxuriant Honolulu. ("Leave the garden forever/ To hazard the crystalline reaches where there is no haven/ In the stony air from blizzards.") Just before I left I married Bacil Kirtley, an anthropologist, ("First Gunner: Mortar Squad, He knew about the blood") and after five years divorced him too. I have no intention of ever making the mistake of marriage for a fourth time. I expect the remainder of my personal destiny to be a happy and literary solitude. From this I frequently emerge to see my friends, to travel on behalf of my Monthly (Quaker) Meeting, and to visit my distant children, three of whom are, or have been, married: Willie to Wendy, of Hawaiian-Chinese-Caucasian descent, John to Yuni, of Korean descent, and Kate to Li, of Chinese descent. Only my eldest, Mead, remains unmarried, and not for want of attractiveness to women. The walls of my self-painted yellow wooden house in Albuquerque are covered with art, which I have found irresistible, especially the three or four by Jim Rosen. And all the time I have gone on writing (Yaddo has been the best place to settle down and create) and publishing poems, even while devoting a lot of energy to my latest book, my first long prose work, a non-fiction memoir concerning years in the mid eighties when my husband and I lived off and on in Mogollon, a ghost town in southern New Mexico. |
