Before the Fact. (Original poetry)

The poems in Before the Fact explore the arbitrary boundaries--names, time, geographic division--that people have placed on the world. These classifications frustrate some characters, like the mother-to-be in "First Daughter," who agonizes over all the possible lives that come with a particular name and wishes for one answer. Other characters, like the speaker in "Four Miracles," see the classifications as keys to the time before they were needed. Still others, by not questioning the authority of these limits, view them as magical. In "Time Lines," Elaine expects drastic differences when she crosses time zones, state lines, and birthdays. Before the Fact celebrates how much of the world we created and offers the hope that by reinventing what we see, we can stay enchanted with the world.