I come to poetry with the desire to tell original stories, and tell them in original ways that are true to those stories. I love subtlety and nuance, but I hate riddles and mystery-for-its-own sake. There's a balance where accessibility meets invention, and in my best work I find it, though more often I just dance around it and point where I wish I could go.

His eyes were pale souls
lost between the body
and the three-day trail to God.

(I'm doing Jordan no service from taking these lines out of context, but... damn.) Jordan seems to find my holy grail of balance effortlessly, almost whimsically--which more than likely means it was painstaking to create and rewrite and rewrite again. Makes me want to pull all the poems I now have sitting in slushpiles and keep working them until I get them there. Too bad Jordan's not a local writer, though I believe she's originally from one of the Carolinas.

Crap. Her next poem's good, too. How did she do that?



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