Beverly A. Jackson’s Comments

You can see that I don’t write in “themes”—my poems usually come out of the air without much warning. The rewrites and edits are mandatory but the first draft seems to drop from nowhere, and I don’t question the material until months and sometimes years later.

I read that poetry is one way of connecting our limbic (feeling) system and our cortex (thought and action) parts of the brain. I believe that those brain parts too often ignore each other, so poetry serves an important role in people’s lives if/when they tune in. That’s why some find it difficult. It is a secret key to the union of our private selves. I suppose that sounds a little poetic, but I mean it in a quite clinical way.

Return to Archive