Poets are time travelers. They move through time as swiftly as the mind darts from today to a dusty past, or from this known moment to an unknown future. The new Bamboo Ridge Press book No Choice but to Follow documents a year in the lives of poets Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita, and Christy Passion as they created 48 linked poems.

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The idea of linked poems, so beautifully realized in the new Bamboo Ridge Press book No Choice but to Follow, fits snugly into a larger idea. The four poets—Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita, and Christy Passion—linked their poems, one to the next, for twelve months in 2008.

What exactly did they use to link the poems?  They used words.  Taking the last line of the most recent poem as the starting point for a new poem, they connected not only poems, they also connected experiences, memories, and emotions. One poem built upon the other, the project grew, unfolding like an exotic, yet familiar, flower.

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Christmas arrived this week in the mailbox, either four months late or eight months early, or maybe right on time.  It came in the form of a modest [...]
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