Caryn's grandmother Ettie on the line here Once poetry took hold in my life, I thought "that's all she wrote," but sometimes another calling comes in through the backdoor. When I started teaching English 101 at the University of Kansas, a gig to support my poetry habit, I had no idea that teaching was it for me as much as poetry. That's how it is with callings: they almost always aren't just one thing, and what's more, they evolve over time. Teaching 18-year-olds how to find meaning, skill,...

"The gift must always move," I read in an article by Lewis Hyde over 40 years ago. I was in my early 20s and only knew that I had to write poetry and also find a way to pay the rent and go out for occasional enchiladas. Until I read those lines, I didn't connect the truth of seeing a calling -- something we feel born to do or something that emerges with such clarity that it just about takes our breath away -- as a gift I needed to pay forward. I only knew Hyde was saying something vital...

In 2017, Rep. Maxine Waters mesmerized us in a congressional hearing with her repeated and confident statement, “Mr. Chair, I’m reclaiming my time.” This occurred in the course of her questioning U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who kept avoiding her questions with extended, gratuitous praise of her to run out the clock. Allowed just 5 minutes in the hearing, Waters advocated for herself thusly: “We don’t want to take up my time with how great I am.” She persisted, consistently...