I Had Been Warned About Jews By

I Have Lectured At Town Hall N.y., The Library Of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University, Colorado, Stanford, And Scores Of Other Places.

The Corncob Was The Central Object Of My Life. My Father Was A Horse Handler, First Trotting And Pacing Horses, Then Coach Horses, Then Work Horses, Finally Saddle Horses. I Grew Up Around, On, And Under Horses, Fed Them, Shoveled Their Manure, Emptied The Mangers Of Corncobs.

The Years Rolled Their Brutal Course Down The Hill Of Time. Still Poor, My Clothes Still Smelling Of The Horse Barn, Still Writing Those Doubtful Poems Where Too Much Emotion Clashed With Too Many Words.

I Grew Up In The Prolonged Survival Of The Great Age Of The Horse, With Harness And Saddle And Sleigh Bells And Horse Pictures, Not As Antiques But The Facts Of Our Lives.

For My Oxford Degree, I Had To Translate French And German Philosophy (as It Turned Out, Descartes And Kant) At Sight Without A Dictionary. That Meant Germany For My First Summer Vacation, To Learn The Thorny Language On My Own.