As I remember, the first real poem I wrote was about the wheat fields between Spokane and Pullman, to the south.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wrote poetry off and on in high school, when I could manage to get out of gym classes and sports - using my allergies as an excuse - and climb the hill behind school till I found a nice place to settle down with a notebook and look at Spokane spread out below.
Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.
I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'
The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.
I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids, repeating the lines over and over until I had them right, making some of the rhythm of the horse help.
A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.
I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.
The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.
It was early on in 1965 when I wrote some of my first poems. I sent a poem to 'Harper's' magazine because they paid a dollar a line. I had an eighteen-line poem, and just as I was putting it into the envelope, I stopped and decided to make it a thirty-six-line poem. It seemed like the poem came back the next day: no letter, nothing.
I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.