Jari Thymian grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm and attended a country school for the first six years of her formal education. The school had no running water, but had a beautiful lake for ice skating.

"My best education was in that school of 16 to 23 farm kids," she says. "I had the same teacher for the six years I attended. Without fail, she read aloud to us every single day -- Black Beauty, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, The House of Seven Gables, and all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It was the perfect start for a poet."

She's an active member of the D... more