Begin with Leaves

In “Vocation,” poet William Stafford repeats his father’s words of advice: “Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.” In her poem “Each Bird Walking,” Tess Gallagher writes, “Tell me something I can’t forget.” And in a letter written to a friend, E. B. White recounts, “I’m glad to report that even now . . . a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me—more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears. I can remember, really quite distinctly, looking a sheet of paper square in the eyes when I was seven or eight years old and thinking, ‘This is where I belong, this is it.’”Although each of us probably began writing at a different time, we have written together now for a surprising numbers of years. In this collection, we hope you find something of the world, something unforgettable, and something of us, which is to say, of you. We began with leaves . . .