My cats are jealous of Rocko's new fame. My husband is jealous that Tracy has a cat that behaves like a cat. "Don't you know cats are supposed to be aloof?" he yelled again this morning as the two of them followed us from room to room practically wagging their tails. I refer to them both as "dog-like cats" which should not be construed to imply that they are trainable the way dogs are. (One of my favorite tee shirts says "Dogs Come When Called. Cats take a message and get back to you." But I digress.) They're dog-like in their devotion to their people and in their demands for interaction with their people as well. But then, my friend, Jeanne has a dog who jumps up on furniture and settles into sun patches in their kitchen.

I'm probably focusing on these overlaps between different animals because as a writer I've been thinking a lot about blurred lines between "species" of writers--about poets who write prose poems and narratives, about the story arc in a script, about the poetic moves some fiction writers make. I've been writing and publishing primarily poetry for a couple of decades now, but lately I've been drawn to prose, both fictional and memoir. Recently I had the thrill of having a story I wrote accepted for performance in a program through InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia. InterAct hires actors to do readings/performances of stories submitted by fiction writers. So my story, written by a "mostly a poet" writer, will become a theater piece and will be read on April 27. (If you're anywhere near Philadelphia, do come!)

At the end of January, WXPN, a local NPR affiliate at University of Pennsylvania previewed the performance on "Live From Kelly Writers' House," a show recorded before a live audience at Kelly Writers' House also on Penn's campus. Before "my actor," Lillian Rozin, read an excerpt of my story, I was asked one question by the radio host. To paraphrase: You're a poet. What are you doing writing fiction? To paraphrase my answer: I've always written fiction, but not, I think, too well until I let the poet in me inform my prose writing process.

WXPN and the Kelly Writer's House at Penn just provided me with a link to the story that was broadcast back in February. If you go to this link http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/calendar/0109.php#26 and then scroll down to January 26 you can listen to the show. (The first two pieces cover my story-- Michaela's introduction which goes into her bitty interview with me and then Lillian Rozin reads the story excerpt. ) The story's not too linear, and I do head off into descriptive/philosophical reverie at times. I guess that's the poet in me, or perhaps as writers we each write whatever it is we write in our own distinctive voices and our voices are the voices of story tellers and poets, playwrights and performers or pundits depending on the tale we feel compelled to tell.