Sarah Arvio, author of "Memory" and other poems collected in her first volume of poetry, Visits from the Seventh, was born in 1954 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up near New York City among radical Quakers. She was educated at schools abroad and later attended Columbia University, where she studied writing. Arvio could not envision herself as a creative writer, she told Borzoi Reader for its website, until she began undergoing psychoanalysis and studying her dreams. "When I thought about writing my own words, I imagined pressing down so hard on the pen that I broke the nib," Arvio said. "When I looked inward I saw nothing but turmoil and grief. I couldn't realize my thoughts; I had a voice but couldn't use it." Soon after turning forty, Arvio found her poetic voice, the product of an "open, amazed mood" that allowed her to listen to her...