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

Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20th century, we kids fought it every Fourth of July not only with exploding powder and shimmering flares, but with all of our senses.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

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

Has the painter not always gone to an art school, or at least to an established master, for instruction? And the composer, the sculptor, the architect? Then why not the writer? Good poets, like good hybrid corn, are both born and made.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.