personal essay

Center writer Kristi Joy Rimbach writes Soul Excacation with Joy.

Before sleep came, my thoughts floated with universes, and drifting off I felt the sweetness of certainty that even brutality could not destroy that quantum, transcendent reality...

I could bear them, I could bear the stars, bear to see the endlessness of them without fear—and the stars poured into me.

For those interested in different ways to structure personal essays, try out segmentation with an exercise by Anne Panning.

The clear takeaway, the living arc of this book, is how a love of poetry and a commitment to a writing life, or any artistic life, can bind two people to one another.