Sallie Bingham

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You are here: Home / Writing / A Perhaps Hand

A Perhaps Hand

February 23rd, 2012 by Sallie Bingham in Writing Leave a Comment

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A Perhaps Hand - 3

“Spring is like a perhaps hand in the window,” e e cummings wrote, and while I can never literally explain what he meant—what line of poetry can be literally explained?—the line always comes to mind when I see the first hints that spring will eventually be here, even in the mountains of northern New Mexico: a bud encrusted with snow, a nest that will soon be used, the first leaves of the daffodil bulbs I planted last fall.

A Perhaps Hand - 2

“Hope is a thing with feathers,” another favorite line of mine—who knows the author?—stands for this time of year; snow showers, gales, melting snow, ice, and the Sangre de Cristo mountains still deep in fifty inches, and crowned, so often, with the thick clouds of another storm.

“Spring is like a perhaps hand in the window,” e e cummings wrote, and while I can never literally explain what he meant—what line of poetry can be literally explained?—the line always comes to mind when I see the first hints that spring will eventually be here, even in the mountains of northern New Mexico: a bud encrusted with snow, a nest that will soon be used, the first leaves of the daffodil bulbs I planted last fall.

A Perhaps Hand

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In Writing e e cummings spring New Mexico

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

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salliebingham avatar; Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
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Spring is full of moods here in New Mexico... I keep waiting grumpily for a spell of warm, settled weather. But not my friends the ravens. This is the weather they adore. "My Friends the Ravens": https://buff.ly/a2YelNT #Birds #BirdWatching #Hiking #TheCityDifferent

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salliebingham avatar; Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
15 Jun 1934231912362467489

At the farmer’s market yesterday, a family band called High Lonesome Highway performed. I don’t know if they write their own music but the wailing heart-broken sounds of old mountain melodies brought #Kentucky here to the high desert https://buff.ly/mhDqow3 #SantaFeNM

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Sallie Bingham's latest is a captivating account of ancestor's ordeal
Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican

“I felt she was with me” during the process of writing the book, Bingham says. “I felt I wasn’t writing anything that would have seemed to her false or unreal.”

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