Like Jessica Seigel ("Inhaling Their Food," Op-Ed, Feb. 21), I assimilated a bit too much into French culture during my junior year abroad in Tours, France.
Their experimental, vernacular early works reinforced the impression Iain and I assimilated from school and university in the early 70s: that poetry had evolved away from contrived artificialities of rhythm and diction to free verse, and that the high points were TS Eliot's The Waste Land and the rugged, ragged lines of Hugh MacDiarmid.
But as soon as I assimilated the famines, the gulags, the violence, I decided, while not forgetting about all of this, to focus on the people and their individual stories, on how it felt to be there, the quality of the air, the routines, the presence of the stars at night".
This is what I assimilated into, and somehow, this is what I am comfortable with.
I assimilated, wanting so intensely to push ahead, to make something "better" of myself that I forgot where I came from.
Not because I loved everything about it, or because it made me a less anxious person, or because I assimilated into it like a mermaid to a fairy tale.
I can assimilate (because I was part of it) but I prefer not to.
Most bishops are failed Rada students and you do have to perform in public, but because I have a strong sense of what the role demands I can assimilate it into who I am without it changing me".
"When I was a little backpacker kid, I was always an outsider, trying to figure out how I could assimilate into the artistic circles of the cities I was in," she said.
