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Jeanine Walker

Local poet starts with a phrase and drives with it

By Dusti Rhodes

Published on January 16, 2008 at 1:42am

If you see Jeanine Walker swerving on the road, she hasn’t been drinking — she’s been thinking. “Poet on board: careful,” she says, laughing (hey, that would make a great bumper sticker). The local poet, who’s about to earn her doctorate from the University of Houston’s creative writing program, says her poems often start while she’s on the road. “I’ll be driving around, and I’ll think of something,” she says. Other times she gets ideas in safer locations, like behind a book. “I Become a Nest,” one of the works she’ll be reading today as part of the Gulf Coast Reading Series, was inspired by the phrase “One must have a mind” from poet Wallace Stevens’s “The Snowman.” From there, she developed her own verses, which explore optimism through a vision of a housewife gathering shadows in her apron like eggs.

Another poem, “Forgiveness Is a Curse,” was inspired by an offhand comment by one of Walker’s fellow doctoral candidates. She tried to humorously interpret the phrase in her first draft but then decided to take it more seriously. “I looked at it and thought, ‘I could go a lot deeper with this,’ instead of just saying, ‘Oh, forgiveness is a plague — ha ha ha,’” she says. The new poem considers the idea in the context of a bad relationship. “We’re going to forgive people sometimes because it’s easier for us to stay in that spot than move forward and grow,” Walker says. “In that sense, it can plague us and not be good for us to forgive.” The day will also include readings by Chuck Carlise and David Lombardi. 7 p.m. Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet. For information, call 713–523–0701 or visit brazos.booksense.com. Free.
Fri., Jan. 18, 7 p.m., 2008