When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.

I admire the attention other writers can give to the world we're walking in.

I don't think I have ever really gotten Leopold Bloom's interior ramblings out of my head! I am sure that voice continues to inspire the walking consciousness in my work - that is, the way I carry on an interior monologue as I walk through this city.

Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my bufdfalo have found me.

Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact. If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory.

Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why.

I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.