A personal biography, a philosophy on the art of poetry:
Since I was first introduced to poetry in high school through Robinson Jeffers, and have developed my writing voice, I have tried to live alertly, so I may speak of actual life, not ideal life-- the concrete rather than the abstract. That means my work is the result of my personal experience, a product of its historic times. Luckily I have mostly lived in peace and wholeness.
The natural world is usually my model, the framework---my theme being the tension between nature and humanity, how we can understand man's machinations as reflected in the world around us. I find myself returning consistently to the red desert world of the American West-- focusing on the particulars of rock and geological forces-- the silence of the landscape, the solitude of the observer. I try to make the sensory life of the earth breathe through my poems using highly concrete images.