I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.

Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.

I find that other countries have this or this, but Italy is the only one that has it all for me. The culture, the cuisine, the people, the landscape, the history. Just everything to me comes together there.

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.

All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight into words?

I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.