The Writing: On finding one’s own measures (Part 2)

On Sunday I began a postscript detailing my most vivid memories of emerging in my career thus far. It turned out to be larger than a postscript. Here’s the next leg of the journey, on my first fellowship and my first book.

My first fellowship.

The same year I received my first acceptance, I started hanging around Poets House, a poetry library once open on the Hudson in New York’s Battery Park. I spent so much time there that I eventually became friends with the programs coordinator at the time, wh...