Maggie, thank you for your work and these annotations. I’m an ‘04 OWU grad (Econ and Humanities-Classics) who has been reading about you for years via the OWU Alumni magazine, but I confess that it’s only recently I started reading your work.
Through your work I have come to appreciate my partner and her observations more, realizing that she too is an every day poet. The daughter of a mechanic from Defiance, Ohio, she has the most interesting and mundane observations that surprise and crack me up. For example, comparing certain sounds around the house or in nature to a loose timing belt or a faulty flywheel, or the motor on a fishing boat. They are markedly different from your poignant imagery, but I adore it.
Today I shared these two poems with her, a first. After I read “I can hear a small hum inside me, an appliance left running.” She interrupted to say “THAT’S TINNITUS!”
“No Penny, it’s not a literal humming!”
I read more until the part where you say the hum is the SOUL, but she still disagrees.
I think it’s because she actually has tinnitus right now from years of work in landscaping, drumming as a teenager, and DJing in loud clubs. It is one hum she can’t quite put to sleep.
I hope you find this as amusing as I do 😆 And thankfully she has an appointment with an ENT coming up 🤓
Thanks, Marcie, and hello to a fellow alum! I laughed because I also have tinnitus that comes and goes, and have joked that it keeps me company when I can’t sleep—but it’s not a hum! 😂
Maggie thank you for sharing these serendipitous connections. It gave words to something thats been floating in my periphery. I really love your behind the scenes discussion they are so rich. 🙏
Maggie, thank you for your work and these annotations. I’m an ‘04 OWU grad (Econ and Humanities-Classics) who has been reading about you for years via the OWU Alumni magazine, but I confess that it’s only recently I started reading your work.
Through your work I have come to appreciate my partner and her observations more, realizing that she too is an every day poet. The daughter of a mechanic from Defiance, Ohio, she has the most interesting and mundane observations that surprise and crack me up. For example, comparing certain sounds around the house or in nature to a loose timing belt or a faulty flywheel, or the motor on a fishing boat. They are markedly different from your poignant imagery, but I adore it.
Today I shared these two poems with her, a first. After I read “I can hear a small hum inside me, an appliance left running.” She interrupted to say “THAT’S TINNITUS!”
“No Penny, it’s not a literal humming!”
I read more until the part where you say the hum is the SOUL, but she still disagrees.
I think it’s because she actually has tinnitus right now from years of work in landscaping, drumming as a teenager, and DJing in loud clubs. It is one hum she can’t quite put to sleep.
I hope you find this as amusing as I do 😆 And thankfully she has an appointment with an ENT coming up 🤓
Thanks, Marcie, and hello to a fellow alum! I laughed because I also have tinnitus that comes and goes, and have joked that it keeps me company when I can’t sleep—but it’s not a hum! 😂
Maggie thank you for sharing these serendipitous connections. It gave words to something thats been floating in my periphery. I really love your behind the scenes discussion they are so rich. 🙏
Thank you I love these annotations they sink in somehow and become a part of my craft, it’s so useful