Patti Ross

Stalks of Talk: Essays and Poems Patti Ross

Against a backdrop of a booming bustling Detroit during the 40's and the fifties, a young girl grows up shaped by her Irish parents and the Dominican nuns at St. Theresa's School. Much later, married and mother of four, she moves to Austin, Texas and in one of her poems explains "I had to take breathing lessons" Along with breathing lessons, she learns to dance the two-step and the country waltz and falls in love with sculling on the Colorado river which she describes in a funny poem about the first time rowing. Essays, poems, and stories expose the stirrings of her heart as she returned to her desk time and again for in writing she dipped into her own private world. It was how she made sense of things . . . still is, she says as she moves into the end zone of life . . . still dancing the two step.