I Love To Sing. I'm A Soprano.

I Have One Vivid Memory Of One Of The Days That The Marches Were Taking Place. We Were In A Catholic, Predominantly Polish And Lithuanian Neighborhood. Chicago Is A Place Where People Define Themselves By Their Parish And By Their Ethnicity.

My Parents Were Liberal Intellectuals But Even They Expected Me To Stay At Home And Look After My Younger Siblings And Do The Housework.

The Decimation Of Lebanon Was Showing Up In Chicago As A Series Of Restaurants And Little Shops, Just As The Destruction Of Vietnam Had Been Visible Here A Decade Earlier. If You Never Read The News But Ate Out A Lot You Should Be Able To Tell Who Was Getting Beaten Up Around The World.

These Events Are Swirling Around Them. In The White Community, People Felt Like They Had No Control Over Their Neighborhoods, Their Destiny. In The Black Community, Centuries Of Government And Economic Forces Were Pushing On Them. I Went In With A Kind Of Arrogance, Maybe, That Came From Living In A Very Intellectual Family, And I Left Knowing That There Was A Lot About The Way People Lived That I Didn't Know About.

She Knew The Intensity Of Adolescence, And Knew No Cure For It Except Growing Up. And Then One Has Age And Experience, And Mourns The Loss Of Intensity. Maybe It's Why Musicians And Mathmaticians Are Said To Peak Young-poetry Needs The Fire Of An Unbounded Universe.