The first time I visited New Orleans in 2010, I fell in love with the sculpture garden in City Park (formally called the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, a part of the New Orleans Museum of Art). When I moved here in 2016, I decided on a project to write one poem about each of the garden’s sculptures.
I set the project down for several years. There was no particular reason—I was just busy with, and enjoying, my editorial projects and not thinking about my own poems. While the project was fallow, two things happened. First, the Garden doubled in size. I decided to stick to the “old” garden, rather than attempt to describe the still-populating “new” side of the garden. Second, my adult daughter, Michaela, committed suicide. I returned to the manuscript pretty quickly after that, allowing the poems to become a vessel for my grief.
The early poems in the book tend to interact with the sculptures in a literal way. I try to avoid describing the sculptures, but I did try to ponder the artists’ intentions and style. As I progressed, the poems became more abstract, focusing on how the sculptures made me feel, with little regard for the artists’ original vision.
A Limited Number of Miracles: a walk through the New Orleans Sculpture Garden was published in 2025 by Bill Lavender of Lavender Ink. It was honored with jacket copy by Cassandra Atherton, Gina Ferrara, Kenning JP García, and Julie Kane. It is available direct from the publisher, in online bookstores, and at Crescent City Books in New Orleans. I really have to pound the pavement and get it in more local bookstores—these poems deserve to be read.
Robert Bilyk and I are currently working on developing an app that will play recordings of me reading the poems as one walks around the garden.