Our Small Ears Never Had Such A

Poetry Is Ordinary Language Raised To The Nth Power.

Every Christmas Should Begin With The Sound Of Bells, And When I Was A Child Mine Always Did. But They Were Sleigh Bells, Not Church Bells, For We Lived In A Part Of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Where There Were No Churches.

Touch Was Important. The Evening Of The Third Of July We Would Go Around The Neighborhood And Look At The Fireworks Others Had Bought, Taking Them Out Of The Brown Paper Sack And Handling Them Cautiously As If They Were Precious Stones. There Was Envy When We Saw Sacks With More In Them Than We Had.

Writing Is Like This -- You Dredge For The Poem's Meaning The Way Police Dredge For A Body. They Think It Is Down There Under The Black Water, They Work The Grappling Hooks Back And Forth.

I Knew About Holiness, Never Having Missed A Sunday-school Class Since I Started At Four Years. But If Jews Were Also Religious, How Could Our Neighbor With The Grease-grimy Shirt Use The Word 'damn' About Them?