The Details Of The World In Which

Noises And Smells, Those Can Bring Back Powerful Memories. I Remember When I Was Going To School One Fourth Of July, And There Were A Lot Of Fireworks Going Off. I Knew That I Was In Richmond. I Knew That I Was A College Student. But I Thought People Were Shooting At Me.

There Are Definitely Connections Between Poems, But I Wanted Each To Stand On Its Own. I Guess It Goes Back To The Idea Of Trying To Zoom In And Out, And To Modulate, So There Are Different Ways Of Looking At Any Experience For The Reader. Even Having Short Poems And Long Poems - There Has To Be Some Kind Of Variation In The Experience Of Reading As A Whole.

I've Been Writing Poems And Stories Since I Was About 13.

As Human Beings, We Have The Blessing And The Curse That We're Able To Adapt To Almost Anything. No Matter How Extreme The Circumstances You're In, They Become Normal.

I Understood That 'the Yellow Birds' Would Be A Peculiar Representation Of The Experience Of Being At War. I Intended It To Be So.