When Rolling Stone Handed Me This Crazy

Poetry Is Supposed To Be Musical. But People Don't Understand Prose. They're So Used To Reading Journalism - Clunky, Functional Sentences That Convey Factual Information - Facts, More Than Just The Surfaces Of Things.

The Arts And A Belief In The Values Of The Civil Rights Movement, In The Overwhelming Virtue Of Diversity, These Were Our Religion. My Parents Worshipped Those Ideals.

The Past Is Still Visible. The Buildings Haven't Changed, The Layout Of The Streets Hasn't Changed. So Memory Is Very Available To Me As I Walk Around.

Yet I'm Making A Book And I'm Going To Care Immensely About What Words Get Bound In The Pages, And I Want The Object To Look Good. I Won't Believe In It And It Won't Be Real To Me Until There's A Finished Book I Can Hold.

So Much Of The Effort That Goes Into Writing Prose For Me Is About Making Sentences That Capture The Music That I'm Hearing In My Head. It Takes A Lot Of Work, Writing, Writing, And Rewriting To Get The Music Exactly The Way You Want It To Be.