To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

To build is to dwell.

I'm going home the old way with a light hand on the reins making the long approach.

The tougher the form the easier it is for me to handle the poem, because the form gives permission to be very gut honest about feelings.

Everything pays for growing tame.

God serves the choosy. They know what to want.

My writing time needs to surround itself with empty stretches, or at least unpeopled ones, for the writing takes place in an area of suspension as in a hanging nest that is almost entirely encapsulated.