News at Eleven: We have a sense that the shape and style

of our dwellings affects the shapes of the lives that unfold within them. Perhaps form in poetry is not so different. "Stanza" is Italian for "room." We live not just in the physical constructions we build--or, more often, that others build for us--but in mental and imaginative constructions we build largely through language. Writing poems is a chance to construct spaces that I want to imaginatively inhabit.

from The Oregonian: Q&A with Mary Szybist, Portland poet and Lewis & Clark College professor

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