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 have fallen in love with American names, the sharp, gaunt names that never get fat.

Grant us a common faith that we shall know bread and peace-that we shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do our best not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march toward the clean world our hands can make.

As for what you're calling hard luck - well, we made New England out of it. That and codfish.

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.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze, The best yuh ever poured yuh, But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes, For Hell's broke loose in Georgia.