Earth's immune system - its rapid response team of self-protection - becomes invigorated at times of peril. And one sees it at play now in the upwelling of grassroots work aimed at finding a sustainable future.
Alison Hawthorne DemingI think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.
Alison Hawthorne DemingI'm always trying to ask myself both "Who am I as an individual?" and "What are the cultural forces that have made me the person that I am?" How can I understand myself as a cultural creature as well as an individual? I'm really obsessed with that question, and always asking my students to consider it.
Alison Hawthorne DemingBringing science into poetry is one way of acknowledging some of the richest stuff that is in my cultural moment.
Alison Hawthorne DemingSometimes it gets talked about as if life is all about the individual, and I don't think it is. I'm really interested in what writing can contribute to a kind of cultural intelligence.
Alison Hawthorne DemingI was attacked by two dogs when I was three and a half years old. I'm lucky to be alive. My face was stitched back together and here I still am, gratefully so. I believe that experience shocked me into a deep alliance with the animal world, its beauty and viciousness and terror.
Alison Hawthorne Deming