|
Mary Jo grew up in Minnesota and Wisconsin where her playgrounds were woods, lakes, and meadows. Strawberries grew wild, and pussy willows graced the springtime landscape. She began a life-long love of nature, music, and art. Her father was a tenor, her mother a watercolorist, and both grandparents were classical musicians. Family inspired and helped shape Mary Jo’s interests, talents and her first book, Joy in the Morning.
A musician as well as a writer, Mary Jo's first career was as a classical concert pianist and harpsichordist. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, she performed widely throughout the Midwest, and later, up and down the East Coast.
Today, she resides in both Wisconsin and Florida where poetry has become a passionate life source and a way of expressing the joy of being alive. She touches on aspects that are familiar to all of us: family, music, art, loss. Her hope is that her poems will go out into the world as a kind of meeting place where readers bring their own colors or nuances to her words, meanings become layered, and both writer and reader can become more because of the exchange.
|
