You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store.

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat.

Writing is like this -- you dredge for the poem's meaning the way police dredge for a body. They think it is down there under the black water, they work the grappling hooks back and forth.

But maybe it's up the hills or under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever you find, is only part of the missing, and writing is the way the poet finds out what it is he found.

All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfway between bread and cake, stuffed with citron and every sort of nut from the farm - hazel, black walnut, hickory, butternut.

You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store.

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.