Considering Judith Kitchen

… she listens for the music of the words, the way they clang and clatter, or fit smoothly into each other with an echo of consonant, an ease of vowel. She listens for the tempo of the mind.

—Judith Kitchen, “Night Piece”

I first encountered Judith Kitchen while attending graduate school at the University of Utah. I met her at the Writers At Work conference after coming across her sitting on the floor cross-legged (her preferred sitting position, as I would come to know). When I introduced myself, her face beamed up at me, eager to know who I was (though I was nobody) and delighted to discover what tidbits of knowledge, entertainment, or gossip I might have to offer.

Our relationship deepened over the years as we met in various cities, in many different venues. But one aspect remained constant: that open eager face and her avid desire to hear your stories and to tell you stories in return. She was always insatiably curious, not only about the life and world external to her, but also about her interior world. And when that interior word became dominated by illness, she turned her curiosity to that topic as well, her mind creating a light as powerful as any laser.

This stance of curiosity is evident throughout her writing, which is often dominated by questions: questions she asks of herself (both earlier and present versions of herself), of the reader, of the world, and of the artifacts of that world. In her essay “Things of This Life,” the present-day narrator begins with a command: “Consider the child idly browsing in the curio shop.” This first line (which is also the first line of her essay collection Only the Dance) embodies the way Judith approached her writing, her teaching, and her conversations. “Let’s consider this together,” she seems to be saying, again and again. “Let’s see where our exploration—in writing or in person—might lead.” And it’s even more fitting that Kitchen uses the word “curio” to describe the souvenir stand; this word, naturally, evolves from “curiosity,” and as the young Judith touches moccasins and rabbit feet and fake arrowheads, her curiosity kindles, and her imagination flares.

In this essay—which I often use with my creative nonfiction students to show the power of shifting point of view—Kitchen adopts the third-person stance to mull her younger self. This third-person perspective heightens her tone of curiosity, and as this narrator gazes at the young Judith touching one tawdry artifact after another, a key question arises: “Why,” the narrator asks, “is she happier than any time during the past week?” This one word, “Why,” is such a powerful workhorse in creative nonfiction. For, as Kitchen shows us so well, it’s not the things and events of our lives themselves that matter in writing; it’s the exploration of “why,” the attitude of curiosity, the questions—not the answers—that will lead us somewhere worthwhile.

In one of my favorite pieces from Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate—a book that examines old family photographs, many of them uncaptioned and mysterious—Kitchen begins by exclaiming this delighted question: “Oh my God, who is she?” She’s referring to a young woman in an off-kilter black-and-white photo, a girl who stands among chickens, with a chicken on her head, a wicked smile on her face. And because Kitchen can’t answer that question factually, she instead uses the question to drive the piece enthusiastically forward. The next line, “I want her for my own,” begins a litany of desire: “I want her affinity with all those chickens, her lopsided leaning, her house all atilt. I want that tipping chimney. … I want that practical dress and the long black stockings, even the sensible shoes.” She sweeps the reader up in her curiosity about the photo, as if she were sitting next to us, pointing out each detail. “Look!” she tells us. “Look at the way light catches each shingle, each brick, each clapboard lining the side of the house. Look at it fasten itself to...