Nicole Caruso Garcia: “The career aptitude test in high school said I should have been a forensic scientist. I didn’t much like English. Yet in college, when in Kim Bridgford’s poetry workshop she selected exemplars to share, I marveled at how those poets managed to convey the ineffable. Their poems shone like little miracles. This was possible? I was willing to gamble that if I worked hard enough at the craft, I, too, might be able to say the otherwise unutterable. A poem can be a kind of forensic account, shining a light on the hidden or overlooked, and providing a framework for the evidence. Even if you don’t get justice, you’ll have the truth. It wasn’t until years later that I first heard the phrase ‘storytelling is activism’ or suspected that writing poems was, for me, an act of defiance. When my full-length manuscript was allegedly finished, my gut said that the narrative was incomplete—not in sequence, but in scope—without this as-of-then still unwritten poem. I had been rolling around the intention in my mind for several years, but why had I avoided tackling it? Sure, a warning sign is a hard truth, but no more unpalatable than the other material in the manuscript. Ultimately, I demanded of myself that I wrangle this sestina into being, and here it is, the final poem I wrote for Oxblood.” (web)
Nicole Caruso Garcia: “I read this poem this evening at Fairfield University MFA’s online memorial event, ‘Remembering and Celebrating Dr. Kim Bridgford.’ Kim passed away on June 28, and this week, in preparation for this event in which I would be participating, I tried to find solace by surrounding myself with Kim books. As I engaged with her words, this tribute poem began to manifest. It is a found poem, so every word is Kim’s, including the title. Spanning all her books, the poem is built solely from individual lines from 60 of Kim’s poems, one for each year of her beautiful life. No more than one line is taken from any given poem—with the exception of one extra line, which was too beautiful not to include. The poem is meant to be read as a conversation between the speaker (who could be me, or perhaps any poet whose life she touched), and Kim herself. I offer this poem with love and admiration, and as a testament to the universality of Kim Bridgford’s voice.” (web)
Nicole Caruso Garcia: “A designer launched a line of school shooting sweatshirts, complete with bullet holes. Like many people, I was repulsed. Also this week, Sandy Hook Promise launched a timely PSA called ‘Back to School Essentials.’ As an educator who taught for 15 years in the public school system, this week’s news made me meditate on my own experiences of school lockdown drills that have become necessary, how I have seen them affect me, my colleagues, and our students.” (web)
