Film maker Andi Olsen has a wonderful short film called Where the Smiling Ends. She waited at the Trevi Fountain in Rome and filmed the tourists only at the moment after their photos had been snapped, the moment their smiles dissolved. It's genius and heartbreaking. I think about her film when I explore the places the strips malls meet the wild world they are eating up.

When I was learning to write I was surrounded by poets; Brian Blanchfield and Annie Guthrie were always with me as I was learning. I'm so grateful for the poets in my life. Because of them I always knew the importance of each word, line.

In writing I found a way to make silence and to be silent. The short story has a lot more silence than the novel and that is its success.

I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.

I am very bad at remembering the books I've read and so recently I had a wonderful experience. I decided I wanted to teach Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I hadn't read it in twenty-five years. I was surprised to find how much I drew from that book. Stole from that book, learned from that book about writing. I had forgotten and there it was. Morrison has called that text faulted. I cannot see how.

I would like to give you more of my heart,but there is nothing more I can give you. I gave you everything and you crushed it into bits.

The lion's share of my work is revision, 85%? I revise forever, combing over lines, listening and listening to them in different hours and moods so that I feel they are finally right for me.