I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

I died in my boots like a pioneer With the whole wide sky above me.

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.

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

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.

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

Ironically the blog has re-opened the essay as a good form for me. I like to look and make commentary! If I sense my essays are good, I try to resubmit to another place in pulp and several of them have been variously published in newspapers and magazines.