My Private Wobegon

stories from home

Is there poetry for ordinary people
You know
Waitresses and nurses
People who clean floors and fix roads
And string cable and make sandwiches
And sing good-night songs
And go off to work every day
To pay for groceries and bicycles
Just ordinary people
Who hear the rhythm and music
Of ordinary life every day
Who don't have time
To ponder navels
Dissect complex phrases
Or analyze a line to death
People who think in poetry every day
But don't have time to write it down
And not much time to read
Catching lines on the fly
That kind of poetry

Carol Allis Arnold has been writing poetry since her father gave her a manual Underwood typewriter when she was seven (i.e., a long time).

She writes for a living as a senior information writer in Public Affairs for Hennepin County (Minneapolis), where she pares down governmentalese into words ordinary people can understand. She has two grown sons and a granddaughter, and lives with her husband, two cats and assorted wildlife in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

She wants to help bring back the loving link that used to exist between everyday people and poetry—before it became too academic to recite by heart in the moonlight.