Feb 032013
 

“It all started in the backseat of my sister’s truck.” That’s the hair-trigger response anytime anyone asks Bill Hayward to talk about “artistic inspiration.”

Well, really it started with snapshots. There was the truck, but there was also Wyoming. In Wyoming, a young Hayward watched red ants bring beads up from deep within the earth—from old burial sites. It was how the earth fused past and present, he noted. Then there was fourth grade art class. Hayward smushed a paintbrush onto paper, watched the bristles splay out, rapt at the potential that lay before him. A humorless art teacher snapped him back to reality— “You’re going to ruin that brush!”

via No Paris in Disneyland: Dwelling in Possibility with Bill Hayward [by Alissa Fleck] – The Best American Poetry.

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