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<h1 style="
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<p class="byline">Carter Vance </p>
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<p class="summary" style="
color: #000;">An Essay</p>
<p><em><span style="font-family: monospace;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: monospace;">[The Baird's Tale asked our authors to contribute about how and why their write poetry. This Carter Vance's Response]</span></span></span></em></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">When I think about why I write, how I
write, and what it is I write about, it all seems to come back to a singular
question in the end: what does one do? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">More specifically, when faced with a
situation, in particular when that situation seems hopelessly mired in
complexities and nuances, how do you move forward?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> I believe we have all found
these times in our lives, in areas from the intensely personal to the academic,
political and professional realms, and the way in which we react to them to resolve
our difficulties ultimately defines who we are as people. The defined aspect of
longing, for the lives and loves we know at a deeper level that cannot be,
characterizes and colours my work in what I hope is a way that is not
simplistic but is nevertheless universal. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">The most profound question of our
age, a time seemingly after ideology, after ideals and concerned with quotidian
management of life events, is simply, then: when you lose all your illusions,
what do you have left? My writing attempts to wriggle, however unsuccessfully,
out of that box, to fight against it, to give an answer to that rhetorical
question. </span></p>
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