"(I) write to help make sense of the world and also to keep alive a sense of mystery." (Quoted in Intricate Countries: women poets from earth to sky, Artemis Enterprises, 1996).

I have written since childhood; it seemed to come almost as naturally as breathing, this way of exploring, encountering, and explaining the world through language, through words and images and stories. I once heard Diane Wakowski say that she began writing because she didn't know how to talk to people, and she continued (even after she could talk more easily) because she found it was something she loved to do. I was glad to hear this, because it was something I felt, too, but had never quite put into words. Writing as witness; writing as hope; writing as play; writing as a way through despair and loss; writing as communication & communion, memory and observation; writing (even when it comes from the deepest anger or fear) as love. A love affair with the world. "In the beginning was the word."

Ellen S. Jaffe's works copyright © to the author.