The Write Life

Barrington poet finds inspiration in Florida landscape

By Laura LaTour
Posted 7/26/17

Tina Egnoski has lived in Barrington since 1992, but Florida remains in her bones. Egnoski, who grew up in Melborne and attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, returned to her home state …

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The Write Life

Barrington poet finds inspiration in Florida landscape

Posted

Tina Egnoski has lived in Barrington since 1992, but Florida remains in her bones. Egnoski, who grew up in Melborne and attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, returned to her home state in 2014 on a research trip funded by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council. While there, she visited the estate of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Yearling". Struck by the wild beauty of the landscape, Egnoski was inspired to dig a little deeper into the author’s life. There she found inspiration for her own writing.  

Most of the poems in Egnoski’s "This Invisible Beauty" are written as if in Rawlings’ voice, viewing the landscape and people through her eyes. “This was one of the easiest writing experiences I’ve had in my life,” remarks Egnoski, “Poems just started coming to me.”

Egnoski,  a Program Administrator for the Gender Studies Department at URI, was drawn to Rawlings’ life story. “I like how strong and independent she was,” says Egnoski. “This was an urban person, who moved to the middle of nowhere and embraced the experience. She learned to do a lot of things she might not have, like hunting, working in an orange grove, and riding horses.”

But what most intrigued Egnoski was how Rawlings found her writing voice in her new home in Cross Creek, Florida. Egnoski addresses Rawlings’ inspiration in the poem Los Hermanos by the Numbers. She writes, “Infinite bliss — thirty-three hundred orange trees on seventy-four acres plus eight hundred pecans . . . millions and millions of words waiting to be mine.”

“I think she is an underrated author,” says Egnoski of Rawlings. “Especially her non-fiction. She has written some beautiful passages about the Florida landscape and people.”

In This Invisible Beauty, Egnoski also writes beautifully of the Florida landscape, its flora and fauna. She describes cypress trees as “hundreds of living ancients knob-kneed, armless ghosts of the shallow.” Snakes become “cottonmouth coils like pie tins half-buried in earth,” and herons “white spectral in mourning hood.”

Egnoski paints a portrait of untamed Florida using all of her senses; the sound of a “bog frog bacchanal,” the scent of “air as foul as tobacco spit", and the taste of pomegranate “Carved jewels in goblet mouth.” It is clear that Egnoski, like Rawlings, is enamored with Florida, as a place and a way of life. As she says in her poem Make Me a Florida Cracker, “I am bitten and smitten. I am home.”

On Thursday July 27 at 6:30 pm, Barrington poet Tina Egnoski will read from her new chapbook, This Invisible Beauty at The Elephant Room in Cranston, 2170 Broad Street. The reading is sponsored by the Association of Rhode Island Authors and will feature an open mic for those who wish to share their own work. Books will be available for purchase and signing. For more information about Tina Egnoski, visit tinaegnoski.com.

Laura LaTour is an avid reader and former bookseller. She is currently working as a freelance writer and publicist. Tell her your stories at: Laura@LaTourCreations.com.

This Invisible Beauty, Tina Egnoski, Laura LaTour

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