When I Was About Twenty-one, I Published

I Saw My Ex-husband In The Street. I Was Sitting On The Steps Of The New Library. Hello, My Life, I Said. We Had Once Been Married For Twenty-seven Years, So I Felt Justified. He Said, What? What Life? No Life Of Mine.

We Write About What We Don't Know About What We Know.

As An Older Person, I Do Feel An Obligation To Tell The Story About What Was Really Happening In The Fifties, Sixties, And Seventies, As I Saw It.

Here I Am In The Garden Laughing An Old Woman With Heavy Breasts And A Nicely Mapped Face How Did This Happen Well That's Who I Wanted To Be At Last A Woman In The Old Style Sitting Stout Thighs Apart Under A Big Skirt Grandchild Sliding On Off My Lap A Pleasant Summer Perspiration That's My Old Man Across The Yard He's Talking To The Meter Reader He's Telling Him The World's Sad Story How Electricity Is Oil Or Uranium And So Forth I Tell My Grandson Run Over To Your Grandpa Ask Him To Sit Beside Me For A Minute I Am Suddenly Exhausted By My Desire To Kiss His Sweet Explaining Lips.

I Believe In A Kind Of Fidelity To Your Own Early Ideas; It's A Kind Of Antagonism In Me To Prevailing Fads.