I’m headed back to Sarah Lawrence College on Saturday for their MFA Alumni Festival. 11am, Ross Gay and I are giving a craft talk titled BFF XOXO
BFF XOXO with Ross Gay and Patrick Rosal
Each writer interviews the other about poems from their collections.
They’ll talk about process, shared and divergent artistic influences,
how they didn’t once take a class together at Sarah Lawrence College
but turned their XOXO into almost two decades of collaboration in
teaching, editing, writing, and a whole lot of other jackassery.
I did not have my shit together, though I eeked out a BA in English-Communications. I had a list of official and personal failures that really set me back. On top of it all, I wasn’t a very good poet. But there was something. My teacher recognized it. I know I loved reading and writing poems. I hung tough and Paul Genega stuck by me. I did end up getting admitted to Sarah Lawrence after making a plea to then-director Thomas Lux. It connected me to people (and ideas) that still keep me company to this day.