THIS LAND
This past summer, I found myself on Anne Spencer’s porch. A fixture during the Harlem Renaissance, the poet lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, where I stopped to visit her house and garden museum while on a long road trip north to Yaddo, a writer’s residency in Saratoga Springs, New York. A search for inspiration drew me there—having secured a university professorship and regular writing opportunities, I realized I am finally on the cusp of something like stability as I near forty. What might it mean, I’ve found myself wondering, to put down roots, to shape a creative life that fulfills me? To find a freedom, perhaps, like Spencer found here.
And so I made my way to the historic district where her home lies, because I wanted to know
