Childhood Is A Branch Of Cartography.

He Comes To This Other World And He Has To Reinvent Himself. Again, It Felt Natural, Even Though I'd Been Working Really Hard Trying To Come Up With Something.

[my Dad] Didn't Do Much Apart From The Traditional Winning Of Bread. He Didn't Take Me To Get My Hair Cut Or My Teeth Cleaned; He Didn't Make The Appointments. He Didn't Shop For My Clothes. He Didn't Make My Breakfast, Lunch, Or Dinner. My Mom Did All Of Those Things, And Nobody Ever Told Her When She Did Them That It Made Her A Good Mother.

In The Immemorial Style Of Young Men Under Pressure, They Decided To Lie Down For A While And Waste Time.

There Were So Many Pittsburgh Poets In My Hallway That If, At That Instant, A Meteorite Had Come Smashing Through My Roof, There Would Never Have Been Another Stanza Written About Rusting Fathers And Impotent Steelworkers And The Bessemer Convertor Of Love.

She Was A Natural Blonde, With Delicate Hands And Feet, And In Her Youthful Photographs One Saw A Girl With Mocking Eyes And A Tragic Smile, The Course Of Whose Life Would Conspire In Time To Transpose That Pair Of Adjectives.