Faulkner gets no special treatment, no more so than the bushy-tailed squirrels outside the high window above the desk where she reads, memorizes great poems, and invites her own to life. No more than the pump of her heart and the “super chipper” 1980s pop music she plays when teaching aerobics or Pilates. It is all noticed. These are the details through which she simply goes about her day and ultimately, in verse, approaches the universal.
Beth Ann Fennelly, 36, grew up in a Cheever short story in Lake Forest, Illinois—“a well-groomed, homogenous town”—so when it was time to declare home she planted herself in the South, a galaxy or two away, where the landscape speaks to her, so seething and fecund, she says. There is something in the density of the vines, their secrets, and in the music and the women, both so over the top, just as she is. They are convincing. She will remain here for the rest of her life.
She used to write at night, thinking it was moody and atmospheric. This was when she first discovered poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame and realized that it was her purpose. But she couldn’t wait for some boy to break her heart to be inspired. Poetry—her poetry—could not depend on some external muse or moment. She would have to be ready at all times, receptive to all moments. Often she finds that even those she dismisses as banal return to be written, begging her to say how they fit into life and connect to the world.
"Accurate perception,” she says, “is a moral choice. The more you look closely, the better you get at seeing.” And so she looks closely, always. That’s where it starts. The looking and listening and thinking.
She looks at her husband and knows that they will never grow old in restaurants with nothing left to say. She looks at her daughter, Claire, barely six, where so many poems and perceptions began. She looks at Thomas, who just turned two. She’s going to be up early with him, one more reason she won’t be at her desk at midnight.

The desk. She is faithful to the desk. She is there for two hours every morning, at least. There is no Saturday or Sunday off, no Christmas or Fourth of July, at least not without some guilt. If she is home, she is there. If she is faithful to the desk, it is faithful to her. Sitting beneath the high window, open to poetic accidents and curious, unbidden memories, she nurtures the habit of seeing well. “The time we share on earth,” she says, “is too precious.”
It is not an easy sentiment or Southern bromide. All the Muzak and the insistence of popular culture make it hard sometimes to pay attention. “It takes tremendous effort to slow down enough to read poetry, think about poetry, write poetry,” the poet says. But it is part of her sense of purpose to use time well. Everything she does she thinks can be used. Every moment is suffused with potential meaning. Talk about pressure on a young mother in a small town.
Sometimes, even as she is tickling her daughter or sharing a glass of wine with her husband, in love with the moment, she thinks, “Maybe I’m not spending my time wisely, maybe I should be working.”
And then she laughs it off because Beth Ann Fennelly sees the joke. She won’t end up like Degas, who skipped his daughter’s wedding to color some apples and pears. She won’t silence her son as Faulkner silenced his daughter, just down the road, when she tried to bring a radio into the house. She sees and listens to her life. She enjoys it. She cooks, plays with kids, gathers together her friends. She teaches aerobics five times a week, smiling at the thought of her proverbial black artist’s beret slipping in the imagination of those who want their poets too serious and consumed for Pilates. She knows that her writing is best when all parts of life, all her identities are in play.
She chooses to live between a library and a park, her mailing address a metaphor for the elusive harmony among all things. The details needed for a good poem and a good life are everywhere.