Why write books or, for that matter, read them? For me, in fiction and poetry at least it's always been a matter of living an alternative life for three or four hundred pages. How else but in a well written book can we escape for a while and truly understand a senator's conflict with power politics (EVOKE), a successful woman's struggle to overcome the sexism at her ad agency (Letters from Ceilia) or a duck-hunter's mental breakdown after what may have been an accidental killing (The Island)? On the poetic side, why read my several collections but to find yourself among the poems?Those, for me, are reasons enough.I also write political commentary and certainly there's enough of that floating around these days. But I try to come to the subject from a wide perspective, concentrating for the most part on its American political and social impact, while maintaining a certain sense of irony and wry humor. Ranting is not my style, nor is a lurch to the right or left. God knows, we are fully enough perplexed and misinformed in the middle.My writing is informed by walking the streets of my life into what surprises me as my seventh decade, ears pricked (they are large ears) and paying attention. It's been a wonderful, loving, hectic, chaotic life, full of ups and downs. The pleasure and pain it's brought me I hope to share with my readers.Perhaps we can begin a conversation and settle into literary friendship.Read more about this authorRead less about this author