I Was Very Lucky To Have A

I Believed Even Then That If I Could Transform My Experience Into Poetry I Would Give It The Value And Dignity It Did Not Begin To Possess On Its Own. I Thought Too That If I Could Write About It I Could Come To Understand It; I Believed That If I Could Understand My Life—or At Least The Part My Work Played In It—i Could Embrace It With Some Degree Of Joy, An Element Conspicuously Missing From My Life.

I Still Believe In This Country, That It Can Fulfill The Destiny Blake And Whitman Envisioned. I Still Believe In American Poetry.

But Most Commonly, It's One Poem That I Work On With A Lot Of Intensity.

My Father Died When I Was Five, But I Grew Up In A Strong Family.

No One Can Write Like Vallejo And Not Sound Like A Fraud. He's Just Too Much Himself And Not You.