I synthesize my life’s work daily as I prepare my manuscript of new and selected poems to come out next year from Red Hen Press. I am, indeed, very pleased but also very apprehensive. I search all old and half finished work as well as try to sniff out current work with promise.

It becomes daunting to finalize  — once and for all — all aspects of a relationship between myself and the page. Almost like a marriage (if I place a comma here, should I take out the line break), a contract.  Hundreds of words to remind myself about things I’d rather not think about. Hundreds of words from a career that began in 1968 as a freshman in college. Lots of words. Lots of poems.