When I Was In College,

You Only Had Widespread Literacy And Books That People Could Afford In The Middle Of The 19th Century. Did More People Read Poetry At The Turn Of The 20th Century When There Were About Fifty Million People?

There Isn't A River Or Creek In The Country - Or There Are Very Few - That Doesn't Have Some Small Group Of People Working On A Restoration Or Creek Cleanup Project. Let Me Give You One Example That's A Great Metaphor: In Washington, D.c., There Is A Group Called The Anacostia Watershed Society. Two Rivers Converge And Define Washington - One Which Everybody Knows About, The Potomac, And The Anacostia, Which They Don't. The Anacostia Is One Of The Most Polluted Urban Rivers In The Country.

When I Began Writing Poems, It Was In The Late 60s And Early 70s When The Literary And Cultural Atmosphere Was Very Much Affected By What Was Going On In The World, Which Was, In Succession, The Civil Rights Movement, The Antiwar Movement, And The Women's Movement In The 60s, 70s, And Into The Early 80s. And All Of Those Things Affected Me And Affected My Thinking, Particularly The Vietnam War.

The Market Doesn't Make Communities. Markets Make Networks Of Self-interested Individuals, And They Work As Long As There's More Than Enough To Go Around.

Longing, We Say, Because Desire Is Full Of Endless Distances.