Death Steals Everything Except Our Stories.

I Was On The Verge Of Jumping Into One Of Those Holes In Life Out Of Which We Emerge A Bit Tattered And Bloody, Though We Remain Sure Nonetheless That We Had To Make The Jump.

I Got $30 From Nation Magazine For A Poem And $500 For My First Book Of Poems.

This Infantile Sense Of Order Tended To Infect My Life At Large. Up At 5:30 A.m., Coffee, Oatmeal, Perhaps Sausage (homemade), And Fresh Eggs Giving One Of The Yolks To Lola. Listening To Npr And Grieving More Recently Over The Absence Of Bob Edwards Who Was The Sound Of Morning As Surely As Birds. Reading A Paragraph Or Two Of Emerson Or Loren Eiseley To Raise The Level Of My Thinking. Going Out To Feed The Cattle If It Was During Our Six Months Of Bad Weather.

The Days Are Stacked Against What We Think We Are.

I Couldn't Run A Tight Schedule, And If You're Any Good At Teaching, You Get Sucked Dry Because You Like Your Students And You're Trying To Help Them, But You Don't Have Any Time Left To Write Yourself.