Between Feb­ru­ary 15, 2021, and March 27, 2021, Chap­ter 21 of Bar­bara Kingsbury’s jour­ney unfolds as she embarks on a deeply per­son­al and artis­tic explo­ration under the men­tor­ship of the accom­plished poet Olivia Kings­bury. Their meet­ings take place in the cozy, book-filled home of Marie Duchamp, where the scent of tea and fresh­ly baked cook­ies lingers in the air. These inti­mate gath­er­ings offer Bar­bara both a sanc­tu­ary from the pres­sures of her aca­d­e­m­ic and per­son­al life and a space to explore the true depth of her poet­ic abil­i­ties. While her broth­er Jerome’s lit­er­ary suc­cess looms in the back­ground, Chap­ter 21 sees Bar­bara grap­pling with her own aspi­ra­tions, striv­ing to carve out a place for her voice amid the over­whelm­ing expec­ta­tions placed upon her.

For Bar­bara, poet­ry is not just a craft but a means of con­fronting and artic­u­lat­ing the com­plex­i­ties of her iden­ti­ty as a young African Amer­i­can woman. Olivia rec­og­nizes this, push­ing Bar­bara to write from a place of authen­tic­i­ty, urg­ing her to embrace both her pain and her tri­umphs. Through their dis­cus­sions, Bar­bara delves into mem­o­ries she had long tried to suppress—her strug­gles with sui­ci­dal ideation, encoun­ters with racial prej­u­dice, and the haunt­ing impact of a trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence involv­ing Chet Ondowsky. These emo­tions, once buried beneath lay­ers of silence, begin to take shape in her poet­ry, trans­form­ing raw suf­fer­ing into pro­found artis­tic expres­sion.

Olivia’s men­tor­ship is marked by a relent­less insis­tence on hon­esty in poet­ry, chal­leng­ing Bar­bara to move beyond aes­thet­ic beau­ty and embrace the emo­tion­al truth of her expe­ri­ences. The two engage in lengthy dis­cus­sions about the pur­pose of poetry—not just as a per­son­al out­let but as a tool for social cri­tique and self-preser­va­tion. Olivia believes that poet­ry has the pow­er to tran­scend the bar­ri­ers of race, class, and gen­der, yet she also acknowl­edges that the lit­er­ary world is far from neu­tral. She warns Bar­bara about the ways in which Black poets are often expect­ed to write about trau­ma in a way that serves white audi­ences, cau­tion­ing her to stay true to her voice rather than cater to exter­nal expec­ta­tions.

Amid these per­son­al rev­e­la­tions, Olivia often reflects on the shift­ing land­scape of the lit­er­ary world, par­tic­u­lar­ly the decline of the once-pres­ti­gious Bell Poet­ry Work­shop. Once a bas­tion for aspir­ing poets, it has become anoth­er casu­al­ty of academia’s grow­ing focus on prof­it over cre­ativ­i­ty, where grants and spon­sor­ships favor com­mer­cial suc­cess over artis­tic integri­ty. Fig­ures like Emi­ly Har­ris, who pri­or­i­tize finan­cial gain over lit­er­ary inno­va­tion, rep­re­sent the ide­o­log­i­cal strug­gle that has shaped mod­ern poet­ry. Olivia, ever the tra­di­tion­al­ist, refus­es to accept these shifts, long­ing for the days when poet­ry was val­ued for its abil­i­ty to chal­lenge and inspire rather than for its mar­ketabil­i­ty.

Bar­bara lis­tens intent­ly, absorb­ing Olivia’s cri­tiques while form­ing her own per­spec­tives on the lit­er­ary world. She is par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by Jorge Cas­tro, a fic­tion writer-in-res­i­dence with an uncon­ven­tion­al approach to poet­ry, whose work blurs the line between prose and verse. Though his genre dif­fers from hers, his pas­sion for sto­ry­telling and his belief in poetry’s role as a force for change res­onate with her. His pres­ence rein­forces the idea that poet­ry and fic­tion, though dis­tinct, share the same mission—to shed light on the unseen, to pre­serve his­to­ry, and to give voice to those who might oth­er­wise be ignored.

As their con­ver­sa­tions deep­en, Bar­bara begins to under­stand that poet­ry is not sim­ply about self-expression—it is about sur­vival. Each poem she writes becomes a dec­la­ra­tion of her exis­tence, a refusal to be erased or silenced by a world that often dis­miss­es voic­es like hers. She learns that to be a poet is to car­ry the weight of both per­son­al and col­lec­tive his­to­ry, to speak even when the world is unwill­ing to lis­ten. In this real­iza­tion, Bar­bara finds new­found con­fi­dence in her work, no longer hes­i­tant to write bold­ly, to chal­lenge expec­ta­tions, and to embrace both the beau­ty and the pain that shape her exis­tence.

This chap­ter inter­twines Barbara’s per­son­al and cre­ative evo­lu­tion with the broad­er ten­sions with­in the lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty, illu­mi­nat­ing the strug­gles of main­tain­ing artis­tic integri­ty in a world that often com­mod­i­fies cre­ativ­i­ty. Through her inter­gen­er­a­tional dia­logues with Olivia, she nav­i­gates the del­i­cate bal­ance between poetry’s pow­er to break bound­aries and its entan­gle­ment with­in the very struc­tures it seeks to chal­lenge. As she leaves each meet­ing with Olivia, Bar­bara feels her­self growing—not just as a poet but as a per­son who is final­ly learn­ing to claim her own space, to own her nar­ra­tive, and to write with fear­less con­vic­tion.