I wandered around in the old Woodstock Library.  It was fall 1983.  I found an old paperback named The Pillow Book.  The writer was Sei Shonagōn, a woman of the court of Japan about 1000 AD.  Ivan Morris had translated…

At Northern Illinois University, in Founders Memorial Library, on the top floor, on the north side, I sifted through Ceremonies.  Then I sat, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows into the night.  Later, I walked down to the Private Collections Room. …

Driving back from Rockford Library, skimming around the curves on Marengo Road, I thought about Ceremonies.  It was late summer, 1974.   A fair amount of material had piled up.  I kept the pieces in the order I wrote them.  There…

On break, I curled up on a pile of boxes and read from my Mentor Book of Major American Poets.  That winter I was working in a plastics factory.  I also pondered the kinds of entries I was writing for…

Some months later, I sat on the bridge over the Kishwaukee River again.  It was the end of summer.  Cicadas buzzed.  The sky was a bit overcast. I had been creating pieces for Ceremonies at random.  A sentence, a paragraph,…

I wondered how to write about sexuality.  It was a few weeks later.  I was lying on the bed in my room.  Summer light filtered through the window.  I had read Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence, both wonderful writers.  But…

Writing about Ross gave me incredible joy.  I crouched on the bridge, bent over, cross-legged.  A breeze tumbled against my back.  Bluegills fluttered in the water beneath me, then soared away.  I could smell the prairie sage on the bank….

In June, 1973, after I left school, I found myself sitting on a bridge built of railroad ties over the Kishwaukee River.  My feet dangled over the side.  Below me rushed green and black water.  Above me hung a blue…

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