Night In A White Wood

"We tell our story in words," says Jacqueline Hoefer. "Whatever we experience of joy or hope or misery, we try to find words to say what is happening to us, not at a moment of high emotion but afterward. We remember an old man looking out at a winter garden, a walk in a wood on a snowy evening, a dog hiding under a couch, and in finding the right words to interpret even small events, we discover what our lives, and perhaps the lives of other, have come to mean.

"The telling is surely of interest to ourselves and may be to others. That is why, I think, many people write poetry. It is certainly why I write poetry."

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JACQUELINE HOEFER's publications include "Imagining the Garden," a book of poems; "Weather Songs," three poems set to music by Lanham Deal; and critical essays on contemporary writers, among them, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Norman Mailer. Her latest book is "A More Abundant Life, New Deal Artists and Public Art in New Mexico," also published by Sunstone Press.

Mrs. Hoefer received a Ph.D. in American literature from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and in the early 1960s taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and at San Francisco State University. In 1967, she joined her husband Peter Hoefer in starting Hoefer Scientific Instruments, a San Francisco company specializing in producing instruments for biological research. After Peter Hoefer's death in 1987, she carried on as chief executive officer.