The undulent landscape looks serene in every direction. Honey-colored farmhouses, gently placed in hollows, rise like thick loaves of bread set out to cool.

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

I loved every place I lived and traveled. London, Paris, Rome, Venice. I fell hard for Central America and Mexico. In each country, I had fantasies that I could live there.

I’ll always marvel at the liveliness of southern speech-so full of metaphor and hyperbole, quirks and vividness.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

If you've got a plot the size of a car or a tiny yard in Italy, you're going to be growing tomatoes and basil and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.

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.