Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

Not that a poem can "hurt" someone the same way a physical blow can or even a mean remark can...I just felt unsure that my tone would be taken the right way and/or unsure of my own writing, that I couldn't maintain the tone I wanted.

Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories."

I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard - and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.

As a teenager, I loved acting, painting, photography, and making films with my friend's Super 8 camera. But I always loved writing the best. I chose writing even before I knew poetry was available to me.

Though it does seem like I have written an immense amount of work, over the years I have pushed the pause button. I have poems that I haven't sent out for publication, mostly based on political/social issues.

In almost every book I've written, there is a reference to a movie - legendary films, actors and actresses, and forgotten made-for-TV movies. The leaps poems make are not unlike the cuts in a film. The miniature and avant-garde prose poets have perhaps the most obvious ties to film, as a prose poem in its shape is not unlike a movie screen.