Linda Parsons

Poet Paul Eluard writes, “There is another world and it is in this one.” Within these worlds, we travel outward and inward, straddling our lives’ oppositions. More and more, my intent is to reconcile these oppositions in my writing: parental/relationship, struggle and loss, home and away, isolation and reconnection, light and darkness, the spiritual/mystical realm and our earthbound physicality. My poetry and prose balance grief and re-emergence, hello and goodbye, for in every goodbye and loss are the seeds of arrival and new beginning. My work is set both in memory and frequently in my East Tennessee gardens, where these oppositions flourish and nourish each other. My garden, my teacher, my palette, where I excavate and discover, where I literally ground myself in every metaphor the earth and its seasons have to offer. My writing has expanded into prose poems/flash essays to reflect the hybrid nature of being and striving. These new forms give me more room to explore and breathe beyond poetics, while attending to musicality and connection of language and thought. Through the many oppositions in my work and life, always moving toward the healing light inherent in mortality, my intent is to lift the veil on what it means to live and create fully, even in the face of impermanence.