Freedom Is Not The Same As Lack

Poetry And Prose Are Of Equal Importance To Me As A Reader, And There Doesn't Seem To Be Much Difference In My Own Writing.

There's Something Immediate About The Experience Of Reading A Poem. It Makes Sense In My Own Mind, But I'm Trying To Figure Out A Way To Articulate It... It's Like Looking At A Painting: You're Able To Take In The Totality Of The Work All At Once, And So Processing Whatever Information That Painting Is Giving You Is Almost Secondary To Simply Apprehending What's In Front Of You.

I Wanted Something That I Could Look Back On And Say, Yes, You Were Fighting Too, You Burned To Be Alive, And Whatever Failure Or Accident Of Nature Caused You To Be Killed Could Be Explained By Something Other Than The Fact That I'd Missed Your Giving Up.

I've Been Writing Poems And Stories Since I Was About 13.

The Male Role Models I Had All Seemed To Have Been In The Military. My Father Served In The Army. My Uncle Was In The Marine Corps. Both Of My Grandfathers Served In Wwii. There Weren't Any Career Soldiers In My Family, But When I Was Young It Seemed Like A Way Of Arriving At Adulthood.