That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

Being five-foot-ten at fourteen years old was a little bit scary.

I do different work, teaching and running around visiting universities and bookstores, and that prevents me from writing. But it's nice to be wanted as a writer.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I'm not much interested in my own self when I write. I'm interested in what I observe out there, what's going on around me.

For 'King Cole's American Salvage,' I rode around in the wrecker with a local driver and watched him deal with customers and hook up the cars. I watched the guy who tore apart the cars in the junkyard. I also wrote poems about those guys. I loved hanging around the yard.

Mothers aren't allowed to have favorite children!