Wherein the Author Ruminates a Bit on the City So Nice they Named it Twice

Of the rich variety of cultural advantages available to New York City residents, it's quite clear to me that the one that really matters the most is the freedom everyone feels to blow his or her car horn.

Sure, the ballet and all that bullshit is great. The Met. The Guggenheim. Yankee Stadium. Papaya King. But all of that is really available in any city with more than 50,000 people, but this horn thing. This is where New Yorkers carve their niche. The horn honking is constant. In an hour sitting in my car on the Upper West Side, I heard more than 650 cars honk their horns. The complex and beautiful language seemed to have three separate messages:

1) I have become bored with the view of your car. I wish for you to pull over and let me pass along so I may wait in traffic behind someone in a different color Toyota.

2) You have parked poorly, and I fear that should I try to make passage that I might press my bumper up against your own. Please come down from your Ritz Cracker box sized apartment and realign your car.

3) I am a cab driver with many appointments in my future, and therefore I am sounding my horn becase a) I require some space to make this left hand turn from the right hand lane, b) my last tip was dissatisfying, and I need to take out my anger on my current passenger, and my normal violent swerving is not working on its own, and 3) it has been several minutes since I last honked my horn.

That last section is a joke. Just the 3 comical reasons. Everything else is true.

New York is a remarkable place. I mean it. About half the people I know think it's the greatest city in the world. I mean just the bagels alone sway most of my pals. Many of them go to New York 3 times a year. They see some art. They get matinee tickets to either Phantom or an off-broadway play where actors dress like kitchen implements and revolt against the eastern-Bloc styled "drawer" they live in (you think I'm making this up, and I'm not). They eat a bagel the size of a Christmas turkey, and then take the train back to Pittsburgh or Baltimore. I trust them. I really do.

I love Times Square. I love the sidewalk in front of MTV. I love Central Park when it's not crowded. I love 30 Rock. I love looking out the windows of my hotel and thinking: "Holy shit! Look at all the tourists." I love the neighborhoods where locals sit on stoops and chat across the street with the neigbors, all while sitting on stoops, or in open windows. I love Riverside Park, narrow and bustling, but lovely for being jammed between the high rises and the Henry Hudson Parkway.

It's exciting and busy, and for many, the only place in the world where all of the senses can be stimulated simultaneously. I see its beauty; I see its allure. But once we finished our interview this afternoon, we hustled across the GW Bridge, and before too long we were two beers and two big plates of food into a terrific and funny evening at the Longhorn Steakhouse in Parsippany, New Jersey, for my money, the greatest city in the world.

Dave Smith - Baltimore, MD

I ran the undergraduate writing program at Johns Hopkins for the last three years, so today is a bit of a homecoming. We drive past the greatest diner in creation, the New Wyman, and then head over to campus. While my wife circles the parking lots, I run in quick to surprise my former partner in the writing program, Susie. She was my program's administrator, but more importantly, she was my pal and my colleague, and a day did not pass that we did not put our heads together to try and figure out ways in which to make the new program work better. 

I bound up the stairs in Gilman Hall and it's like old times. "Hey," I say, when Susie turns around and sees me. "I haven't gotten a paycheck in six months. What's up?" We hug and talk about some of the new construction on campus. Susie checks in on this blog from time to time so knows roughly where I've been. She says, "How are you doing?" and all I can think of, after 40+ poets and 16,000 miles, is - "I'm tired." Then we both laugh. She's busy and I've got to get to my interview, so we make a promise for my wife and I to get together with her and her husband for lunch when we come back through Baltimore later in February, and I race out to head over to see Hopkins's newest poet.

Dave Smith has only been in Baltimore for about 18 months, but his imposing stone house shows a man at home and comfortable. We move through the first floor to a back room surrounded by windows that open into the back yard. A cat scurries across. I meet Smith's wife and they settle some plans for later while I get my gear out. Smith co-edited the Southern Review for a dozen years, and is as well known for that as he is for his terrific and vast production of poetry.

We sit at a wood table, facing each other. Smith has on jeans; a purple shirt pops out of a nice blue sweater.

He answers in complex but complete thoughts, filling in gaps in answers by looping back, putting periods in by saying, "I think that's enough." His voice resonates in this room, and he listens to each question and weighs it a bit before answering. The answers develop clearly and forcefully. Even when he completely disagrees with an idea that I'm searching for insight on, he does it like a gentleman, with a polite revamping and then a new path.

We go out front after we've chatted and I position him in front of the house, on a slight rise above me. The family dog - who barked when I went up these stairs when I arrived - sees me now and is silent. Smith is patient while I take out both 35mm cameras and start shooting. While we stand there, we talk about an old friend of his, someone who taught me in grad school more than 20 years ago. Smith remembers him in the old days, and thinks fondly of him now. We both love his work.

Before I go, I mention where I'm headed in the coming weeks. He hears one name and asks me to take along a special message. His eyes light up a bit - it's a fond memory or an inside joke, I think. I promise to pass along the greeting, and I go.

Rita Dove, Charlottesville, VA

More than two decades ago I was a befuddled but beautiful Psych major at Arizona State University. I had long hair and a 31" waist. I was riddled with insecurities, however, about my future (which is, of course, just like today), and I was in receipt of another college transcript showing a wide variety of shades, nuances, and colors, but hardly any A's or B's. 

I was searching for a reason to get out of school, or maybe a reason to stay in. I did poorly in the Psych classes I finished, but I wasn't finishing too many of them. I had found my way into a ton of other classes, however: Philosophy, Mass Com, Sociology, and a few classes in writing (everything from freshman comp to introductions to poetry and fiction).

I walked across campus to the Language and Literature building, an 8 story behemoth that housed classrooms and several Humanities departments, and took the elevator up to English. I supplicated myself in front of the departmental secretaries and told them a version of the tale that brought me to my knees. "I need to change my major," I said. "Can I get a degree in English?"

The three secretaries came to the front desk and took turns tilting their heads at me, then shaking them sadly. I may be wrong, but I think one of them reached across and patted my hand. "It's too late," one of them said. "You're a junior. Tough it out." "Have you started taking your required courses yet?" another said. I proffered my transcripts, which showed a variety of courses, low level writing courses, nothing meaty. "I think you better see someone," one of them said. "Give him to Rita," one of them said.

They pointed and I began my middlepassage down the hallway to an open door. Before Rita Dove could say much more than hello, I collapsed into a chair in her office and began sawing the mad, deep cello of my heart. Except for the occasional squeak of the chair, my robust and romantic woeful story washed us both. I thought I might weep. Surely this young, beautiful woman would see the pain, the misery, and she would weep, too. I waited.

"I don't know how to do it," she said. "But I'll get some forms." And she disappeared.

An hour later or so I walked out of the Language and Literature building into blinding sunshine. (This is not metaphorical at all; it was always blinding sunshine in those halcyon Tempe days.) I was an English major. I had the forms. Rita had solved it all. She gave me a schedule for the coming semesters. She asked if I was going to be all right, and sent me along the way I had come.

Rita Dove lives in a spectacular and quiet neighborhood outside Charlottesville. In the directions to her house are these words: field, meadow, Ivy, pond, lane, hills, and rolling. I stand outside the house and look down at this little body of water behind their house. It's partially covered with ice, but the sun is beaming down on it, shining up mad shards, erratic ribbons of light.

Rita and her husband, the writer Fred Viebahn, greet me and we try to remember the details of the last time we met, two decades ago. Fred was moving a box of books out of or into Rita's office. He thinks that's right. He and Rita would have just moved to Arizona; he was likely helping her get her office set up.

Fred goes off to his study and Rita and I sit in the living room on large white couches. There's a piano in the corner. An acoustic guitar casual up against the wall behind an occasional chair. Rita looks exactly like she did 22 years ago. She smiles at some of the memories I recall at the beginning of our chat. I'm trying to give her a sense of how important that one hour of February 1982 was, without making too much of a fool of myself. My life changed that day. I gave away the obligation to do something for others and took the charge of doing something for myself. I chased a dream that was my own, a dream (reading and writing?) without obvious and sensible rewards. And the past 2 decades are only possible because I made that walk on that one day.

But we leave that behind. Rita is glad to hear it, but we move on to the interview.

It's good to note, I think, that Rita Dove is a brilliant poet, one of extraordinary grace. Her books are rich, textured, funny, beautiful, honest, fearless, enlightening, and - always - sharply wrought. Her poems swirl into life and then explode into clarity with one final line, one last stanza. Sometimes just the right word.

She is one of the most admired and honored poets of her generation, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Poet Laureate. She has collected awards and achievements of a remarkable range. But one thing she tells me today obscures all the rest: She and Fred are ballroom dancers.

She talks about a wild notion that drove them and their neighbors into some lessons. She and Fred were the only ones who stuck it out, and now they dance in the style of the "American Smooth," a somewhat loose interpretaion of the sometimes arcane and rigid rules of classical ballroom dancing. The foxtrot. The waltz. Samba. They have outfits. I've seen photos. Fred with his flowing gold mane in a tuxedo, Rita in a spangly purple number.

We finish our chat about the suddenly mundane matters of poetry and place and then go outside for some photos. Fred joins us as does my wife and we stand in a loose formation overlooking the pond. What I want to say is, "Fred, I want to see you dance. Give Rita a twirl, would you?" I have such envy over this that I'm getting the kind of crazy thoughts I'm usually able to keep at bay. Maybe after the trip is over, my wife and I should start some lessons. I like the sound of that. Twirl. I want a tux like Fred's got. I want what Fred and Rita have. Not the house. Not the pond.

I want to dance the American Smooth.

Nikki Giovanni - Blacksburg, VA

Nikki is wearing a medal when I meet her at her office on the campus of Virginia Tech. Her poetry has won almost uncountable awards, plaudits, and honors, but this is an actual medal. I'm thinking figure skating or the 400m hurdles or something.

But the medal is from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences which Nikki got earlier this week at the annual Grammy Awards dinner in Los Angeles. Her spectacular spoken word release of "The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection" lost out to Al Franken - go figure - but the nomination, the medal, and the good seats she had (near Carole King) made the trip a great success.

She's wearing the medal because her students wanted to see it. Just before our chat starts she even gets a call from a student who wants to know about the medal. Did she wear it to class? Did the other students like it? Was Nikki on TV? Nikki answers the questions, reminds the student to turn her paper in, and has to admit that she never got her mug on the TV. And it's too bad, because it's a great mug, open and vital.

On the walls of her office she displays posters of Tupac Shakur, Bob Marley, and Prince, and her long love of music fills her work in the same way. So I smile at the picture of her sitting there on Tuesday watching Prince and Beyonce tear up the opening number, and then later George Clinton and P-Funk tear the roof off the sucker.

We talk a little about Nikki's life in Appalachia: Knoxville, Cincinnati, and here in southwestern Virginia. She spent ten years in New York City and loved it, but her life has been here. I can see the campus out her window behind her. The blinds are wide open, and the sun on this seasonable February afternoon pours in, lighting up Nikki from behind, giving her spectacular white/platinum hair a real glow.

Nikki wants to talk about place widely, and in further locales than anyone else so far on the trip. We talk about Mars, about the need for humans to keep exploring. The wheel took over for the horse, Nikki tells me, and it follows that if we can get to Mars, we really should. She talks about space and the future of humankind with such fervor that I have to ask a question. "What about a poet on that first crew to Mars?" I ask. Nikki's eyes light up. "I think it should be a woman, a black woman, a black woman in her 60s." She laughs.

We wrap it up with some photos. I take another peek at the medal. It's cool, but not as cool as Nikki.

Charles Wright - Charlottesville, VA

Along with Miller Williams - who one can find in the 09/07/2003 archive to the left - Charles Wright belongs on American poetry's Mt. Rushmore. Wright has been a titanic figure in American letters for 40 years and his power is undiminished. It is frankly with some nerves that I appear at his three story home in Charlottesville on absolutely the crummiest weather day of the trip. It's 32 degrees and it's been raining for 9 hours. Trees and power lines are ice coated. The main streets are clear and wet, but the small road in front of Wright's house is like the area around the blue line at the Montreal Forum.

But a typhoon couldn't keep me from making this appointment. I've been a fan of Wright's for as long as I've read and written poetry, and it is enough for me today to simply meet him.

I slide along the circular driveway in front of the gorgeous but imposing gray house and Wright waits for me on the porch. He's a little surprised I'm sans hat, umbrella, etc. We go inside the dark and warm first floor and he leads me up two flights of stairs to his study. I, meanwhile, am bumping the camera bag and tripod against every hard surface. A small dog, locked away for the visit, sets up a little barking to let me know I'm making too much noise.

We emerge into the spacious attic, really more like an entire floor of the house, shaped like a cross with four annexes to the outside world. Wright's been in the house for 20 years, formerly a boarding house, but it was the previous owner - an artist - who fixed it up, including this great floor.

I spot a large table in the center of the room and begin getting equipment out. I notice a little beaten down chair next to a small table in one of the nooks and ask Wright if I can use it. He assents. It's 30 minutes later when we're talking about where he works that I realize this is his chair. It's off to the side near a window that opens over the front of the house, and it's where he writes in longhand. I'm in his chair. I might as well ask him if I can use his toothbrush before I go.

But, on this horrible gray day we sit alongside a large wooden table and I ask questions - who knows what questions I think of to ask - and all too soon it's over.

I get out the 35mm cameras and Wright positions himself in a large arm chair draped with a lovely patterned sheet and I shoot some photos. We talk a bit about a couple of poets I've met along the way who Wright knows. We stand by the table where he works and he points to a scattering of 30-40 photos, all of which have worked their way into his poems over the years. Except one. There's a black and white shot of The Silhouettes, a doo-wop group of the mid and late 50s who are most remembered for their single "Get a Job." That one hadn't made it into a poem, until this week that is. Wright tells me that he's just got something started about that photo.

He'll need more photos soon. We need more poems from him, so I pray he gets some more photos up there soon.

Alan Shapiro - Chapel Hill, NC

We are in Chapel Hill between winter "events." Snow lays alongside roadways and mounds up 6 feet high in parking lots. Tomorrow freezing rain is expected, but today is nothing but blue skies and temperatures in the high 40s. We're traveling this month in a red Ford Escape, a so-called intermediate SUV that is jammed with our stuff. If I eat one more meal, we'll have to throw out a suitcase to make room. I wanted the full-sized space, but wanted to pay the intermediate price. In life are such things. 

Winnie Cooper is back in Savannah, GA, parked sadly between two boats at a some kind of fly by night storage facility that will likely be closed and deserted when we return in a month's time. I paid cash for the space. I didn't get a receipt. I might as well have driven the old girl right into the bushes and taken my chances that way. Alas.

We roll into a picturesque neighborhood just north of the University of North Carolina. Bare trees tower above us as we meander down a thin neighborhood road. Trees separate the 30 or so houses in the area. We pass a pretty young girl on her way to school, pink Converse sneakers, bookbag.

We find the driveway to Shapiro's house and turn down it, winding further into the woods. My wife takes off to find gasoline, some coffee, and a route out of town, and I head toward the house. I knock on the door but nobody comes for a minute. I hear music coming from the back yard and make my way - like any snoopy guy - toward it. I pass some stunning 7 foot tall metal sculptures, salvaged metal welded into figures reaching up.

In the shed I see Callie Warner, Shapiro's wife. She emerges from a smoking piece of metal that she and her assistant are working on. She takes off her work glove and shakes my hand, offers to lead me back to the main house to see Alan.

We go in, and after we all chat a bit about the trip, Alan and I take a tour around the house. He shows me several of Callie's pieces, furniture, a breathtaking dining room table made of metal, some paintings. He tells me something about each piece and he's has proud of the work as if it were his own.

But of course he's an artist, too, a tremendous poet and essayist whose work unstintingly peers into human relationships to uncover the elments worthy of praise or investigation. (In some ways, it's a collection of essays called The Last Happy Occasion, that shows Shapiro at the height of those particular powers.)

We go into his study and sit facing each other, the back yard out a large window that Shapiro admits is usually closed when he's working. We talk about the psychological landscapes that make up the work, the interiors where his characters play tense and beautiful scenes.

We talk a bit about how a city kid who called Boston and Chicago home found himself for the past 18 years in a bedroom community in the South. He talks about his great friends and his kids, all loved madly. He reveals that in a given group, he's the most allergic and the most likely to be attacked by bugs. "I'm a human No-Pest strip," he says.

Once we finish, Alan tells me about a book he wants to do next year involving interviews. I tell him about recording equipment, what to buy, what not to buy. Get something made of iron, is the main thing. It will be dropped countless times before the project is done.

We nip outside to take some photos in the brilliant sunshine, and then I go.

Coynes Laundry - Marathon, FL

The humidity is suffocating. It's like breathing a hot milkshake. The line of dryer vents is not helping either, as they churn out hot air onto me as I sit on a creaky park bench in front of Coynes Laundry. My wife is inside dealing with eleven days of clothes and I'm keeping the bench down, staring across the hot four lanes of US-1, halfway between Miami and Key West, where we're headed for a 2 day break from Winnie and the Poets.

My wife joins me and we have the following stirring conversation:

Me: Jesus, it's hot.
Her: I don't think I can stay here if it's going to be this hot.
(Pause)
Me: Jesus, it's hot.

After that dies down, my wife spots a guy staggering alongside the highway. He's got a buzz cut, wearing jeans and a denim shirt and is lurching down the southbound shoulder while cars shoot past him. It's clear he's drunk. My wife taps me to get me to watch, and as soon as I look over at him he piles head first to the ground, rolling halfway over into the gravel shoulder just feet away from the paved surface.

In less than a minute a red pickup truck pulls off the road and a guy gets out and goes over to help. The drunk wants nothing to do with it. He's up again, staggering toward a convenience store while the samaritan walks alongside.

Finally the drunk goes down again, and this time it's for good. Two of the ladies doing their laundry come out and look across with us. "Is that Mike?" one of them says, and then she walks toward the road, sort of eyeing the scene.

The owner of the laundromat comes out and looks over, then looks at me. "Uh, a guy fell over and it might be Mike," I say.

"Oh, no," the owner says. "He just got out of jail last night."

We hear sirens. Two cop cars and one ambulance come from different directions. The samaritan turns things over and heads back to his truck. He waves over at us and one of the laundry ladies. She shrugs her shoulders and sort of waves. She doesn't know him.

The samartian pulls a u-turn and stops in front of us. He points at the one lady and says, "Hey, when did you get back into town?"

The lady is still a little confused, but says, "Last month."

"You don't remember me, do ya?" the guy says.

We're all standing there sort of playing along.

"It's Mikey," the samaritan tries. "Remember? Melon shooters? My brother's got an apartment above the Dive Shop?"

"Oh, yeah," the lady says, finally pulling in the signal. She winks at the laundry owner and then sidles over to the guy's truck to reacquaint. He pops his door open and I'm a big fan of his shirt full of pelicans and his neck full of chains.

The lady who originally walked away to check out things walks back to all of us. "Yep, it's Mike. It looks like he tied one on last night."

"He's a homeless guy who lives under the bridge down there," the owner says. "He comes around here a lot.

Another thin guy in jeans and a t-shirt is sort of sneaking up on the ambulance, looking things over, steering clear but trying to see what's up.

"That's Mike's buddy," the owner says. "They hang out together. They're good pals."

We all stand there a bit longer and the humidity starts to get to me again. My big head is sweaty, beads rolling down onto my nose.

Mike gets loaded into the ambulance and a dryer buzzes inside. My wife and I look at each other and we go inside to fold.

Campbell McGrath - Miami Beach, FL

Campbell and I are standing in front of his gorgeous garden home plugged serenely in a bucolic neighborhood in Miami Beach. He shows me two trees in his front yard, both planted and grown by him over the past ten years. One is a Royal Palm that is as big around as two bulldogs and must approach 40 feet. It started as a stalk, not even waist high. The other palm is a little shorter, but thicker, and grown from a coconut that Campbell stuck in the ground ten years ago. I could maybe hit a golf ball over it if I had a full case of Red Bull. I wonder if it takes any particular skill to grow palms like this, but don't want to ask. Perhaps all it takes is sandy soil and the ever present humidity that makes even a cool morning like this feel sticky.

We go in Campbell's bright yellow home - under a pretty arch, scooting past his sons' skateboards - and sit in the front room, the outside air wafting in through two elephant-eye-high gated windows that are open to the street.

Campbell's a Chicago transplant, but he's fully at home in Florida now after a decade. He's happy to call himself an urban poet, and his work has long explored the commercial landscape of America, the strip malls and convenience stores that are undeniable cultural and physical landmarks.

We talk about South Florida, a region that Campbell says is distincly Latin, not like the American South at all. He's interested in it and his bilingual students who come to him with a dense melange of cultures. Campbell tells me that Florida's culture is something he went in search of when he first moved here, but he found it missing. It's as if the place developed and grew without a record being made of its spurts.

When we finish, we go stand outside and Campbell points out some other trees opposite his house, 90 years old, original residents of the neighborhood. He asks about our plans, which include a brief vacation from the trip - a two night stay down in Key West - and we say goodbye.

Denise Duhamel - Hollywood, FL

With more than 13,000 miles very recently under our belts, it's pretty easy to say that traffic varies widely from town to town, state to state. With the possible exception of Beverly Hills on a Saturday afternoon, the stretch from Miami (where we and Winnie Cooper are spending a week) to Hollywood is the most discouraging. We spot the signs of U.S. 1, The Dixie Highway, and we imagine it will link us quickly to the north, but it's a soul-killing parade of endless red lights and jittery drivers who slam between lanes like they were lottery players looking for just the right combination. 

Additionally, our resting point while in South Florida has turned into a bit of a nightmare. Now, I don't expect every place to be green and beautiful like Granite Lake in southeastern Washington State, or remote and pristine like Death Valley, but nothing could ever prepare you for the Miami Everglades KOA Camp where we pulled in a couple of days ago. Motorhomes have been shuffled here as tight as any deck of playing cards. Need sugar from a neighbor, just slide your window open and tap the dude on the shoulder. Well, unless it's our neighbor to the west. All he's got is weed. Oh, and the classic rock radio that he plays all day, all night, even past the normally Nazi-strict "quiet hours." All parks have these hours, usually something like 10pm - 8am where everyone is supposed to tone it down a bit for the retirees. But not our dude.

On the first night, around 10:15 pm while Free was blasting "Feel Like Making Love," I strolled past the side of his place to see what was up. Party, maybe? All of his friends. A minor breaking of curfew. Good friends, good times. But it was just him, head slumped, doobie in one hand and Jim Beam in the other. When he spotted me he gave me a big grin, a welcoming smile. I reversed field and headed back to the relative quiet of Winnie Cooper.

The next night the music played on. Mostly 80s stuff tonight, Men at Work, Hall & Oates, but then back around to the oldies, the Moody Blues..."I'm just a singer in a rock and roll band..." Etc. We're here for 5 more nights.

Denise lives on the ocean under blue skies year round. She lives in Hollywood, Florida, a place full of retirees and vacationers. But she's young, hip, working, and getting all of the benefits most of us dull slabs have to wait until we're 65 for. So it'd be easy to hate her if she wasn't so wonderful - as wonderful as her work, I suppose I'd say.

A Rhode Island native, she's logged her time in Boston and New York, so sunny climes are a gentle and wonderful reward for all of that. She tells me about some of her favorite writing spots, a local coffee shop, the wide and windblown boardwalk just north of her apartment, the beach itself, just steps away from her building.

Like some of the writers I've met, Denise revels in the anonymity of a large, bustling city. She can escape in public places and take in the characters and stories only available to someone who's a great listener. She writes in notebooks while on the town, then comes home to her office to turn the scratchings into full-blooded poems.

In person, she's a dynamo, eager to talk about the powerful effect this newish place has on her work, her health, and her happiness. She's animated and lovely and we have a terrific session in the sunny and large living room where light pours in on us. I tell her about another poet who she knows and she's sincerely happy to hear some news of a good friend. I tell her about another poet I know here in town and she knows him, too. We talk about his recent new job and in this way we catch up like pals - even though we've just met.

I say my goodbyes and look for my wife. She's across from Denise's apartment complex, staring into the shiny waters of the Intercoastal Waterway where $250,000 boats bob past on their way to - wherever - does it matter? Neither one of us wants to get in the damn rental car and get back on that highway. I ask her if she'd like to live in Florida, and she says, "Only if we never have to drive."

True enough. But we know we have to get back to Winnie for the night. And the classic rock. Our dude waits, he and his pal Jim Beam. We drive and start making bets on what's playing. I think it'll be the Marshall Tucker Band's "Heard it in a Love Song." My wife opts for anything by Skynyrd.

Choosing

About a third of the poets I meet ask, "Why me?"

It's a complicated question, and I don't think I've ever given a completely satisfactory answer. But in this entry I thought I'd try.

1) The work of some poets just screams out "place" to me, poets like Miller Williams, for example. It's always been impossible for me to read his work without feeling the South in every line. So I sought out many poets like this when I was first putting a big list together. I wasn't trying to stack the deck in favor of the conceits of my book, but I did want some ringers, some folks who would think that the question, "Has place influenced your work?" was a satisfying and enjoyable place to start a conversation.

2) Simply, geography. The planning of this trip has been monumentally challenging. I've been unable to completely describe the logistics of it to anyone. The truth of the matter is, early on, I had a huge road atlas in front of me, and I knew we'd be hurtling thousands of miles, dozens of states, shooting through countless - and many now unremembered - towns. And since we were there, why not talk to someone? I will confess that there are some of the poets I've met this year who I hadn't even read before this trip. I don't know what sort of revelation this is; my god, there are tons of poets out there. But lucky geography has led me to several folks who I've now "discovered" in a real way. One of these poets is David Romtvedt of Buffalo, Wyoming. I saw that our route was taking us through his part of the state, and using Google, I happened across his name. I read some poems online, loved them, and I'm very grateful I took the time to contact him and visit his picturesque little town. His work fits this project beautifully, and better yet, he was a terrific guy to spend the morning with.

3) The old/young dynamic. Relative terms, I assure you, but since I went to school in the early 80s, many of the poets I studied are now 60+. Because I wanted a good cross section, I knew I'd need to find poets roughly 40 and below. It's easy to pick someone who's been in the game a while and has 15 terrific collections. It's a little harder to find someone more or less just starting out. But as the overall list was being created, I noted that it skewed older than, say, the average age of a living American poet. So I began to work on adding younger poets. It was in this way that I discovered Beth Ann Fennelly, for example, a dynamite poet from Illinois, now in Mississippi.

4) Some poets I wanted to meet with disqualified themselves by noting that place just wasn't a concern for them. They didn't see how they'd fit into the book's conversation. Some poets have bowed out because they were too busy, finishing books, doing research, teaching, new children, etc. Sometimes it just was simple bad timing. Poets on sabbatical. Poets out of town during the week I was going through their area. The vagaries of my trip caused some of this, and without going around AGAIN, I don't know how to avoid this sort of problem.

5) Some poets I just could never contact. Some never replied to any of my queries. My preferred method is via email, and a surprising number of poets - even ones in academia - don't publicly list an email address of any kind. In many of those cases I've sent faxes to their offices. In some cases, the fax worked and we've been able to set up meetings in that way. But in other cases I was never able to reach some poets that would have been welcome partners in the book's conversation. (In some extreme situations I've even used the telephone to reach folks who had been otherwise unreachable, and again, sometimes I've been successful getting a hold of someone, sometimes not.) Obviously this limits the book in some ways. I toyed with the idea of seeking out previously published interviews, finding a way to fuse this material with my own, but that seemed less than satisfactory. So much of this trip is the actual physical visit that I make to the poet's home. And in the end, I never want the visits or the interviews to be something the waiting poet is dreading.

Finally, I can say that the process of choosing poets for the book has been a fascinating challenge. It's a rigorous thing I'm asking. Not just, "Let me ask you some questions," but welcome me into your home or office. I'm going to appear on your doorstep in a few weeks with a giant bag of cameras and tape recorders. I'm an imposing presence (I mean, fat); my bald head is gleaming with sweat (regardless the weather). I'm on a schedule. I've just driven 200 miles in the big rolling tin can. My wife is circling your narrow neighborhood streets while I'm here, and I've got 200 miles to go this afternoon, SO PLEASE RELAX AND GIVE ME THE ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS. I'm unclear what state I'm in, what town. I may confuse you with another poet I met yesterday or will meet tomorrow. And I'm likely to eat any amount of cookies you put on a plate in front of me. It's frightening, I guess is what I mean!

But, 38 poets into the project, over 13,000 miles later, I would do it all again, every moment, because the poets I have met have been universally terrific, giving of their time, receptive to the ideas, and just plain fun to spend part of a day with. A mighty "thanks" to them all - past and future - just isn't enough.

Peter Cooley - New Orleans, LA

Peter Cooley's house has a purple door. It's a rich and powerful hue, and we see it from well down the street as we negotiate the narrow passage.

We're in Jefferson, actually, just minutes west of New Orleans proper. In less than 24 hours in and around the city we've been stuck in traffic behind three different accidents. Last night, after spending a pleasant but chilly night in the Quarter, we sat for nearly an hour motionless on I-10 behind a two car fender bender just before the gorgeous twin span bridge that links New Orleans to Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Ponchatrain. Then this morning as we drove into the city again we came to a stop behind what looked to be a dirt spill. No truck in site, but maybe 70 yards of black topsoil was spread across three lanes about three inches thick. Of course the cars come to a screeching halt. The dirt, my god, the dirt! A little honking, however, convinced the delicate flowers ahead of us to push through. Then on our way here we edged by a t-bone crash in an intersection, a champagne colored Saturn up on a median, its driver scratching his head, wondering where on earth that other car had come from.

But the purple door opens and I'm welcomed in my Peter and his wife - and the delicious smell of chicken cooking.

Peter and I sit in the living room and I arrange the gear. The digital camera goes on a tripod off to the side, where it will work on its own, shooting images once every 10 seconds or so. I get out my indestructible Sony Cassette-Recorder and look for a place near Peter to set it. He's on a big soft couch with no tables near him so I prop up two very unlikely - but charming - fish-shaped pillows, each about 18 inches long. I learn that Peter's wife doesn't like them, but to me they look quirky and homey.

The chicken cooks, Peter's wife fusses with some papers, and Peter and I start to chat.

The purple door comes up a couple of times because Peter wants to talk about the rare quality of light that exists here. He's always had a debt to light in his work, but he really became aware of it during the research and writing of his celebrated volume, The Van Gogh Notebook. This part of Louisiana has just the right climate and humidity to give colors their due. The reds have a rich redness, the purples really pop. I wouldn't believe if it weren't for the door that I look at more than once during my visit.

I tell Peter about another poet I saw earlier in the trip who had suggested I make this visit. It's a poet who Peter knows of, but doesn't know personally. He's genuinely touched at the gesture and says, "He owes me nothing." But I hope I would have found my way here anyway. Cooley's work is not a natural or obvious fit for a book about "place," but I've long since learned to look past the obvious things. Peter's landscape is internal, questing. The speaker in many of his works is caught inside a frame of his own design, looking out, peering out, wondering if indeed there is a way out. It's heady stuff, and rich in place in ways that doesn't require the occasional name of a town or street or roadside bar.

He tells me a bit about his kids, who he clearly loves, and who are displayed in photos on the fridge, in a bookcase, on the piano, etc. He asks about the next stop while I start to pack up.

"Let's get some photos outside," I say, even though it's a chilly January morning - and even though Peter has already told me a handful of times that he left Detroit, Chicago, and Iowa behind mostly because of the temperature. I'm thinking get him posing by the door. The purple door. The poet outside.

Beth Ann Fennelly - Oxford, MS

Beth Ann Fennelly has just finished a 15 page poem about kudzu, the climbing and unstoppable vine that covers millions of acres in Mississippi, Alabama, etc. Kudzu is a Southern touchstone, and when my wife and I first moved down here in the mid 80s, it seemed an exotic and frightening natural world element too spooky and mysterious to ever fully understand. We left Mississippi after only about 18 months, so its reappearance as we drove into the state last night set us thinking about the South, a place, a way of life, a varied and multi-faceted landscape vastly more intriguing than the easy and lazy stereotypes that abound.

But Fennelly is from the north, suburban Illinois, specifically. So I wondered how she came to be here in Mississippi, and - more importantly - how she got so in touch with the evil vine.

We park alongside her home's huge corner lot, and Beth Ann greets me and lets me into her delightful and airy home just minutes after putting her daughter down for a nap. I sit opposite her, my back to an entire wall of book-filled shelves, actually pretty and white cupboards, some with glass doors.

She met her husband, the fiction writer Tom Franklin, in Arkansas, the furthest north Franklin had ever traveled (he's from Alabama), and the furthest south for her. After some years in Illinois, they've settled in Oxford, a hip and wonderful Mississippi town, also, of course, the venerable college where Fennelly teaches, Ole Miss.

Fennelly tells me a little about kudzu, an Asian vine that was introduced to America at the 1876 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia. An ornamental vine in its homeland, it grows best in the climate of the southeastern U.S., where it is free of its homeland's variety of pests and bugs. In the summer, the vine can grow a foot a day, and it does, obscuring fences, trees, power poles, sides of houses, etc.

Most folks see it as a nuisance, but for Fennelly, it represents one of the things she loves about the South, its places, and people. It's mysterious. It covers up some things that would normally be too in the open, too easily seen. Like her favorite elements of Mississippi, the kudzu conceals some of what's underneath, leaving rich stories for writers to unearth. She believes in her own work she's doing the same things.

Supposedly napping, Beth Ann's daughter has serenaded us throughout the interview with a combination of singing and talking, a burble of words and sounds that have reached down the hallway to us while chatted.

I won't see her on this visit, but I was glad to to hear her little songs.

Wherein the Author Visits the Hometown of Britney Spears and Spots the Star Shopping at the Family Dollar - Despite His Wife's Varied Objections

Naomi Shihab Nye - San Antonio, TX

Nye lives in a beautiful 100-year old house in the fabled King William district in downtown San Antonio. The neighborhood - which boomed originally in the middle of the 19th century - is an eclectic collection of two story houses painted in funky colors. Right across the street is an empty park and I stand there and look across at it for a while before going in.

We go through the house to a back room that looks out over the back yard and garden. Nye gets me iced tea and a tray of nuts and candy. She shows me some pages from a new anthology she's put together, one that pairs poems and paintings from Texas writers and artists. It's large, colorful, and rich inside with many folks that Nye has known after a quarter century in the state.

We talk about the project a bit, but soon my questions lead her into several terrific stories. She tells me about a 5 day trip thorugh Louisiana that she took with her husband and son in the waning days of 1999. They took turns being in charge of all the events of a single day. The trip, they called a "meander." On her husband's day, they all went and sat in a field, sketching. On her son's day, they knocked on a small town mayor's door to ask some questions.

They found themselves one evening watching the sun go down while standing on a jutting promontory. Water surrounded them; the sun bore down into the horizon. Nye tells the story with real feeling, and it's not hard to be caught up in the event as though I had been among them.

We go out to her bustling back yard and shoot some photos. It's been overcast all day, but as soon as we get out there, the sun starts poking through the towering pecan trees that are everywhere in this part of Texas. Nye, the wife of a photographer, is comfortable as I shoot. We continue chatting while I run a few shots with the Canon and then the newish Nikon. When we're done we go back inside. I go after the caramel popcorn squares, Nye signs a book for my wife and me, and too soon I'm back on the road.

Wherein the Author Waxes About the Concept of "Repair"

Somewhere in Arizona a rattle develops underneath Winnie Cooper. It's not one of those rattles you can live with, it's a heart-stopping rattle that is so loud that you can't even hear the endless and life-killing whine of the tires on yet another stretch of highway.

My wife and I look at each other with different thoughts on our minds. Hers: "My goodness, there's a small problem that we will have to solve as a couple; then the trip will continue apace." Mine: "I hope that this thing explodes like a supernova so we can sell the parts for scrap, get a nice Buick Century, and start living in hotel rooms like regular human beings."

We pull over on the side of the highway and I squeeze my gigantic belly underneath the coach, somewhere near where the sound seems to originate. I don't see it for a while, but eventually I spot a sort of tin mud flap that is there to protect the motorhome's automatic stair mechanism from roadspray. The flap has detached from a metal bracket. The bracket is worn out, unrepairable. The tin flap is going to hammer like John Henry against the tire and the stairs for the next million years. We're doomed. Any sense of peace or joy is gone.

"We can fix it," my wife says. Mentally, I'm placing an ad in the Daily Bugler: "RV 4 Sale. Includes towels, soap, and wife." My wife says, "We can go to Wal-Mart and find something."

So we do. We drive the newly clanging beast up the road and pull into the distant stretches of a new Wal-Mart. I trudge behind my wife to the eleven or so aisles that make up the hardward section. She tosses various packages to me, some kind of aluminum wire, plastic ties, duct tape, a new pretty towel for the kitchen.

When we get back to Winnie Cooper I am resigned to the fact that it is expected that I should be able to fix this thing. I drop the various items out of the bag and then get down below Winnie again. I begin threading the plastic ties in and around some holes I see in the flap. I take those ties and attach them to other ties. They're brightly colored. It's a kaleidoscope of color, the ties, my red pulsing head, the black and greasy undercarriage.

I'm not much of a man. I mean, I'm unable to build a cabin or tie a fly or fly a glider off the coast of Brazil. I just watch TV, write a little. I know what I lack. I couldn't have lived through the depression. I'd be the first person to crack in a stuck elevator. I'd be the one the soccer players would eat first after a plane crash.

But, as sweat flops from my brow to the ground below, I continue to tie the flap to anything I see. I use the plastic ties, some of the wire, and then encase the entire mess in about $24 of duct tape. It's an unmovable mess. It looks like something very bad has happened, or will soon. But it doesn't make any noise when I whack it with my head as I try to get out.

My wife wants to see it, but I just tell her to get in the coach and cross her fingers.

The noise usually starts around 35 mph. By 45 mph it sounds like a small airplane. At highway speed it sounds like fifty nickels in a blender set to frappe.

We point it on Highway 10 and keep heading south. It's quiet. It's unnerving it's so quiet. At 60 mph I get a little smile. I'm drinking an entire can of Sierra Mist and thinking about me and the other greats, the Wright Brothers and whatever it was they built, the guy or gal who made the radio, whoever made up fractions. We're all giants. We've all looked into the world's mysteries with keen eyes and unbending will.

My wife looks at me anew. I am evolving. I am one step closer to being the grown-up she's been waiting for.

As we cross into Texas a few hours later, while my wife dozes under the new issue of Time magazine, a single rattle sounds from beneath us. It's momentary. She doesn't hear it. The "fix" is coming undone; of this, I'm sure. I hold my breath but hear nothing else. At any moment I fear it will all come apart.

Jane Miller - Tucson, AZ

Jane Miller lives across the valley from the gorgeous Santa Catalina Mountains that ring the eastern landscape outside Tucson, Arizona. We sit in her great room and I sip sparkling water as though I were a fancier man than I actually am.

Jane's a walker, and she tells me a little bit about hiking the trails in and around this hillside house. I ask about the local wildlife (spiders, snakes, scorpions, etc.) and she admits that she's skittish about the snakes, and sees a variety of these desert creatures regularly enough. (Because I'm hopeless, I spend the next thirty minutes scanning the floor for an approaching attack. It is winter, however, and I'm unlikely to get stung, bitten, or poked. But since I'm such a delicate flower, it's good to be careful.)

She admits to a somewhat nomadic life, and tells me a bit about her love of the sea, coasts, and particularly Humboldt County in northern California. Aside from the poetry talk, she confesses a brief involvement with painting - while in California - and I ask a bit about that. On the trip, I've been fascinated by the avocations of poets and academics. I ask Jane about the connection of painting and poetry and happily she tells me that - for her - they connected in very real and obvious ways.

We also talk a bit about the ongoing project, and I'm always glad to get advice. I'm always worried that the personal journey is too far removed from the interviews with poets, but Jane suggests that there are likely stronger connections between those twin studies than I'm currently seeing.

As always, far too quickly it's over. I pack my stuff and we say goodbye.

I load up the rental car (because Winnie and my wife are 100 miles north with some family while I do this quick 2 day trip to the Tucson area), and drink in the endless and bathing sunlight. It's been nearly 20 years since I left Arizona, and winter here is spectacular. My mind recalls my first day in the area in the late 70s, an August scorcher of 114 degrees. But by the time this area heats up again, I'll be a long ways from here.

Richard Shelton - Tucson, AZ

When Richard and his wife Lois built their house in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains in 1961, they were one of only three residents in the vast and unscrubbed Sonoran desert some 10 miles west of Tucson. They and their young son relished the remote location, but scorpions and one spectacularly dog-hungry gila monster made the land a little more hostile than a similar spot nearer the city.

But Shelton wouldn't trade the experience or the spot. While it's true that the neighbors have arrived over the past thirty years, the spot is still breathtaking. Unlike the desert areas right around Phoenix, where I've just left, Tucson's desert is packed with cacti, hundreds of thorny "platypus" or pancake cacti jammed in every square city block of space. And up on the foothills where Shelton lives, the inhospitable nature of the place is still apparent. Sure, there are concrete roads that wind in and around the adobe-colored homes, but a foot off the main road and you're on gravel and rock, and the desert is everywhere.

When I first arrive, we try to broker a peace settlement with Shelton's mammoth St. Bernard - Jefe. He's not fond of some strangers, and I must appear more strange than most. It's decided - by Jefe - that he and I won't meet. Shelton puts the otherwise friendly and implacable behemoth out of our way and then joins me on a sun dappled patio south of his house.

As always, I'm interested in a poet's place, and it's obvious this place has beauty, but Shelton talks about the transformational nature of the desert, a place that in summer can still be scorching in the dark of a moon-filled night. He has for years brought his students to a nearby area to read poetry under moonlight, and his love for the area is clear in his conversation and his work.

When we're done, Shelton and I shake hands. I peer through the gate at Jefe as I leave. His tongue takes a circle around his jowls and I give him a little - a final - nod.

Alberto Rios - Chandler, AZ

Phoenix is a bit of a homecoming for me. I went to school here in the late 70s and early 80s, met my wife here, and drove fast and wild on the desert highways in and around Phoenix when I was infallible and indestructible. So it's terrific to be here again, my first visit in almost 20 years. And while I did my B.A. work here, I hardly ever think about Phoenix as my "college" hometown. I just wasn't much of a student. I didn't think much about class, went as seldomly as I could, and really just visited campus when I had to. (Not that I'd recommend that for any of the kids...stay in school, stay off the pipe!) 

Two things I love about Phoenix: 1) Streets are wide. Not just the big streets, every street. The mountains are a long ways off, and the desert surrounds you, so even in the city you feel a bit like you're in the middle of nowhere. Room to move. Room to breathe. 2) Most folks have given up on the whole lawn thing. Keeping a nice lawn is a vexing sort of thing no matter where you live. What kind of seed? Do you want to aerate? What about those weeds? Crabgrass? Kill them with chemicals? An organic path to a weed-free lawn? Aren't there BUGS in the lawn? Chiggers waiting to feast on my belly. A chigger with an attitude and a tattoo. In Phoenix, "lawns" are nice stretches of chipped rock, gravel, white, gray, red sometimes for contrast. A saguaro cactus and three wheelbarrows of rock and you're done landscaping until the next ice age. Anything else is just vanity.

Alberto Rios - and his family's sweet dog, Kino - welcomes me to his lovely home in Chandler. We're just south of Tempe where Rios teaches at Arizona State, my alma mater. We read at the same function more than 20 years ago, although neither of us remembers too much about it. We sit in the front room and we talk about what it's like for me to be back in Arizona after all this time. I tell him about the trip a bit and he tells me about a recent sabbatical he's taken.

He was born south of here in the border town of Nogales, and has spent his entire life in the state. He talks with real passion about the deeply complex twin culture that has been such a big part of his life. Born on the border, and inhabiting borders of all kind ever since. His poetry is well known, affecting, beautiful. His manner is gentle, sincere, and his responses to the questions are thoughtful.

He tells me about his first poetry, scribbled in the back of his school notebooks. As he recalls it, the only thing the back of the notebook was used for was spitballs and stuff you could write but couldn't show anyone else. He remembers that he was writing for himself then, not for school, not for assignment, not for a grade. It was an important but solitary part of his progress, and he wonders what effect a more organized introduction to poetry might have done to him.

As an important and influential poet, he clearly has had numerous opportunities to go elsewhere, nearer the hubs of publishing and academia, but he's chosen - both consciously and subconsciously, I'd imagine - to stay here, within an easy afternoon drive of his hometown. The Southwest is his place, a place to live and work, but more importantly the place that is inside him and his poetry. As a dedicated wanderer, as someone who believes the "next" place is always to be sought, I find myself deeply envious of Rios as I watch him and Kino go back inside the house.

Wherein the Author Wonders Anon About RV Life (In What May Be Called Part 2 Of That Series) And Also Goes Bold About the New Year

We’re not like the normal RV travelers who surround us in the parks and campgrounds we travel through. What’s been very surprising is the diversity of folks who live – if even for a little while – in big rolling tin cans.

Not surprisingly, retirees make up a good portion of the mix. As we moved south, we found more and more travelers who were full-timers, people who lived mostly year round in their RVs. These folks often are equipped with 35-45 foot Class A rigs, some approaching a half million dollars. But others get by with 40 foot travel trailers (pulled by a ubiquitous Ford 450 truck). These rigs are a lot like our own, but enjoy extra space in the bathrooms and kitchens. The appointments inside the most expensive rigs are a lot like a really nice model home.

But full timers often don’t travel too much. In every park we’ve stayed in, “perms” or permanent residents make up a hefty percentage of the park’s denizens. In some parks, perms take up as much as 70% of the spaces. These are honest to goodness trailers and RVs, but they are usually heavily appointed with built on porches, skirting from the bottom of the rig to the ground, and decorated with plants, bushes, bikes, and garden sheds.

Other full timers will spend months at a time in their favorite spots. They’ll put in 6 months in Yuma, Arizona, or Orange, California, then suddenly pack it all up and head back to the Dakotas for a month to see kids and grandkids, only to head to Florida for a month and then back “home” again in space 41.

Once we got into California – and in small part nearly everywhere – we found many parks where workers of various kinds live in the parks. Sometimes three or four guys will share a small travel trailer. They leave early each morning and arrive late at night, some wearing phone and power company uniforms, some just day laborers. In every park we’ve stayed we’ve seen three or four kids waiting for school buses at the highway feeder.

And not all rigs are like the deluxe version discussed a couple of paragraphs above. Some parks are full of broken down trailers and motorhomes, some 30 years old, many clearly not going anywhere ever again. Rent is cheap in these places, sometimes as low as $10 a night, or $100 a month. When people’s options narrow, RV parks and campgrounds – always with bathrooms, showers, and coin laundries – become homes. Folks struggling to put food on the table for their kids share spaces next to millionaire retirees who might own a stainless steel barbecue on wheels that costs more than the rig of their poorer neighbors three spaces down.

Each park is as different as one can imagine. Typically, state or national parks offer the fewest amenities. You’re lucky if you can get a water line; it’s very rare to have power. But of course, like at the Painted Rock Petroglyph site where we spent New Year’s Eve, your amentities are different, a brilliant star-studded sky, immense and suffocating quiet, the endless desert floor ringed by sharp and pretty hills and mountains. (But god forbid, if you should want to watch Dick Clark’s Rocking New Year Eve, you have to run the damn generator, and generator hours always end at 8 pm!)

The typical RV park is more “RV” and less “park” than we first thought. Some larger parks have 500-1000 spaces. There may be trees dotted through these places, but for the most part they’re parking lots with water and electric stands popping up every few feet. The showers, bathrooms, and laundries are usually in good shape, clean, located well. But it’s not very verdant. It’s a business, obviously, and if you’ve got x amount of space, it makes financial sense to fit as many rigs in as you can. But there’s usually nothing to look at, just endless rows of white rigs.

Other times, however, parks are lush and green, with ample space provided. In Pahrump, NV, we sat alone with grass on one side, a man-made lake on the other, and a picnic bench and barbecue pit alongside. In Clarkston, WA, we stared out over the bank of the Snake River in a park that was immaculate and pretty, and made up of only 50 spaces.

The people are unfailingly friendly – although the “perms” tend to hang with their own a bit, suspicious of day travelers like us who make too much noise getting set up only to unhook the next day and spoil the normal routine.

Everyone has advice about rigs or accessories. Everyone wants to know what you think of your slideouts. A lot of folks just want to look inside. Every conversation ends up being about where you’ve been and where you’re going. You can find one person in any park who knows every single propane stop in the state, or every public dump station. If you say you were in an RV park off the highway in Oregon, someone knows the name, the name of the owner, the fact that the price went up to $12 last year, and whether or not they have space in the summer.

But the daily driver, the day traveler, is rare. Typically, because of our schedule, we’re spending 1-2 nights each place we go.

We arrive midday and pull into our spot. Our routine is set and comfortable. I deal with getting the 30 amp power plugged in – a manly and robust black plug so big and heavy that I feel I might be turning the lights on to a small city somewhere – and my wife connects our water hose. We push buttons inside to operate the slideouts, one the width of our couch that turns the dining room into a dining room and living room, one in the bedroom that gives us walking space all around the queen sized bed. I get the satellite dish up and pointed to the southeast sky. Well, I don’t do anything but press two buttons, but I hear the whirring and know that I’ve made it so.

And we’re home. There’s a soft fabric cover that we connect to snaps that separates the cab of our rig from the back, and once that’s in place we don’t even think about Winnie Cooper (the rig’s long-standing name) as a moving vehicle. We’re home. We cook. We fire the computer up and tell folks where we are. We take a stroll through the park. We peer in at folks playing bingo in a small hall in the park. We might take a shower, do some laundry, and then catch Sex and the City and Soprano’s reruns before going to sleep.

And the next day we will likely unhook it all. We’ll put the power cord back, the water line. We’ll negotiate the necessary but unpleasant task of dumping the contents of our black and grey tanks (huge holding tanks under the vehicle that collect – I know you’re dying to hear this – waste from our toilet, sinks, and shower). After breakfast we get in the cab, check the map, and roll out of one park and onto the highway feeder. We drive slowly at first to make sure stuff is settled and put away. We occasionally jerk to the side when one of us remembers that the all-important satellite dish is up and being torn from the roof because someone – it’s me, obviously – has forgotten to put it down. And then we take the on ramp onto one of the endlessly amazing highways or interstates, and we’re back on the road, always looking, always pushing forward.

And in this way, days have become weeks have become months.

It is 4:45 am as I write this. New Year’s Day 2004. We have crossed over from one year to the next. When the sun went down last night, we cooked dinner, popped a bottle of champagne we’ve been carrying around since early October, and then – under only the light of the half moon – we scoured the sky with our binoculars. Stars upon stars. Countless dots of light, light hurtling at us – like the light of the North Star, for example – sent this direction hundreds and thousands of years ago. And then, like old people all over, no matter the home or location, we turned in early, long before the big ball dropped in NYC or anywhere else. At midnight we were asleep as 2003 clicked off and 2004 began to arrive.

I woke up early, around 4 am. And I began to think about the journey started months ago. The decision to leave our jobs, our home. The mountains, the coast, the desert. Highways. And always lurking, what’s next? What town, what job? This trip is full of things that are named and unnamed. I’m writing a book, looking for a new teaching job. My wife is deciding what’s next for her, a business, back to her career, something else we don’t even know.

Loose ends. The money is disappearing. It’s not an endless supply, I can tell you. I have the small white bank receipts to prove to you that the time is dwindling faster than even I – a noted pessismist – imagined. But we wouldn’t go back now. We wouldn’t turn back for anything. It’s a road that we chose and one we’re going to hurtle down until we finish the journey. When the interviews are over in March, and when we’ve negotiated the rest of the country, I suspect the sadness will be real and overwhelming. The real world will intrude like never before. But there’s time still. Time still to continue the dream.

Just now, the light is appearing in the east, over a hill whose name I do not know. My wife sleeps. I leave Winnie Cooper for a bit. The desert is always cold in morning, but I stand out there for a while anyway. The only sound – I mean the only sound – is the rush of blood in my temples, the sound of my breath. The sound of a new world coming on.

David St. John - Venice, CA

I see "the actor" before my wife does. We're killing twenty minutes in a Mexican restaurant in Venice while waiting for my interview with David St. John. "The actor" is not famous. He's not George Clooney or anything. I mean, if he was, I'd be sitting here typing this minus one wife. (I'd wish them well, you know, I'm not a bad sport.) 

But anyway, "the actor" is a TV guy. You'd know him. He was on a sitcom in the 90s. He's well known enough that he's wearing a sort of disguise, dark glasses (though it's dusk), and one of those stocking hats that he probably thinks suggests "hip hop" but makes me think of sledding.

This is the only reason I might live in L.A. I don't get the appeal of the weather. It's 71 degrees in my house 365 days of the year, too. The freeway thing is okay, but my enjoyment of them only extends for a few days. Now I just feel like getting a moped and staying on surface streets. But of course those paths have their own risks as well. Let's just say that there are a lot of reasons to want to live in L.A. They just aren't right for me.

"The actor" gets his chicken burrito and scurries over to corner stool/table combo and faces the corner to eat. His cellie rings and he gets into it with Paul, giving directions or giving them. He's getting lousy reception so goes out onto the street leaving his food behind. A little girl, about 9, pokes her Mom and they both look out the window. "Is that him?" she asks her mom. And the mom nods. When the little girl looks over at me she smiles and then points out the window, making sure I see him, too. I give her a nod and a smile. She's a nice little kid.

"The actor" is talking on the phone still but walking away now. I can see he's left about 85% of his burrito. Never took a swig of his bottled water. I can't remember when, but my wife says his show went off the air years ago.

David St. John lives in a friendly and warm little house in Venice. We stand on the street in front of it for a couple of minutes when I first get there to get some photos. It's late in the day and I don't want to miss the last of the light. Usually we shoot these photos at the end of the interview, once we've grown comfortable with each other. But I ask the favor and David says, "Sure." We make small talk and I shoot David against a backdrop of towering palm trees and his pretty, quiet street. He's interested in the crazy trip so asks some questions that I'm happy to answer.

We go in after a while and settle at dark wood table (I'm thinking arts and crafts) and talk about a variety of things. David's work is majestic, serene, literally shimmering on the page at times. He's a literate guy, but his poetry is only better for it - this is not always the case.

He talks beautifully about growing up in the nearby San Joaquin Valley, living and working in Italy, and being a teacher and writer for almost 20 years here in L.A. He's clearly thought about how place works in his poems, and I rarely need to say a thing. We fill one side of a tape, flip it, and just keep going. At the end we talk about some other folks I've seen or am scheduled to see. David knows them all. He has a message he wants me to take along to someone and I'm happy to.

He walks me outside to my wife and our rented car. He says hello to her and goodbye to us both. He tells us to keep enjoying the trip, which I think is a better send-off than almost anything else.

Carol Muske-Dukes - Los Angeles, CA

Dogs love me. Dogs see me coming and think, "Chewy Treat. Big Shiny Head Like a Ball. Slow of Foot. Easy to Lick." Carol's three dogs all go for me like I was covered in Gravy Train, even poor, dear Fletcher hobbled by a recent ligament repair to a back paw. 

I've been missing our poor old boy, Tucker Satellite, so I give all the dogs a little love before Carol and I settle in to big soft couches in a gorgeous room (paintings, piano, Christmas tree.)

Carol Muske-Dukes lives in a stately neighborhood east of Hollywood, an area that first boomed in the 20s. Her daughter takes two of the dogs for a slow walk around the block while Fletcher hunkers down at our feet.

We talk a little about L.A. I'm intrigued by the folks who live here. Nobody thinks of it as a city. It's too sprawling for that. It's a bunch of compact and busy towns built on desert and mountains, bounded by the sea on one side.

Carol tells me that it's a good town for a writer, easy to isolate oneself from the fray. Any place you want to go is 20 minutes away, so you've got the preliminary buffer of the car ride. Plus, if it's just too far, you can stay home.

We're talking about influences to Carol's writing and she remembers being 4 years old, pushed in a swing while her mother recited Robert Louis Stevenson in the backyard of the family home on Pascal Street in St. Paul, MN. "I had the sense of being pushed out into the world, and yet brought back," she says. She tells me that it remains a lovely and unforgettable memory, which of course I know.

We take all the dogs and Carol's daughter into the back yard and we shoot some photos under a steely winter sky. And then I go.

Donald Revell & Claudia Keelan - Las Vegas, NV

Donald Revell and I stand under a brilliant blue sky laced with Las Vegas's ever-present jet contrails. We're in the backyard of the house that Revell shares with his wife, the poet Claudia Keelan, and their son, Ben. We're south and west of Vegas near a tiny settlement called Blue Diamond.

Like most people who live here, Revell lives nowhere near The Strip, where the casinos pulse with gigantic and gaudy lights, and where the flood of tourists gamble on cards, dice, and love. (Oh, c'mon, let me wax a little poetic.) But the point is, Vegas is a city like most cities. You've got your downtown, your suburbs. There's industry (here it's roulette, showgirls, and magicians). And it's populated by a wide variety of folks: friendly, happy, creepy, noisy, kind, etc. People from all over the world come here, but the citizens shop, drive, work, just like it was a regular place.

Revell and Keelan both teach poetry; she runs the MFA program at UNLV, and he commutes to be a part of the excellent program at the University of Utah. (Revell flies to Salt Lake City once a week - 2 hours door to door.)

We talk for a few minutes, and when Keelan gets home from turning her grades in at semester-end, the three of us sit in patio chairs near their newly installed lap pool. They point out the spare desert landscaping. Everything out here was planted by them, including a lovely acacia, and - surprisingly - 6 full size Christmas trees, one for each year (minus one) that they've lived here.

Keelan is originally from California, and Revell comes from the Bronx. But they both are at home in the desert. Their work, too, is heavily influence by the empty spaces of their adopted home, especially in Keelan's Utopic and Revell's My Mojave.

After we finish talking we shoot some photos. Their son Ben peers at me through the blinds of a back window, and I give him a wave one time when I see him. As I'm finishing up with his parents, Ben emerges - taking a break, I think from some Tony Hawk game or likewise on Playstation2.

He stands between Revell and Keelan against the stucco wall of their home, and I shoot the family.

Area 51

I must admit to being a bit of a conspiracy theorist. (Nut, I guess, is what most people would substitute.) It's really not a good idea to get me started on the faked moon landings or the real killers of JFK. But I'm pretty reasonable about Area 51, the main jewel of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), a large and remote area 100 miles north and east of Las Vegas.

Since the 1950s, the NTS has been used as a test facility for the most advanced aircraft the U.S. military has (starting with the famous U-2.) Since then, everything from the F-117 to the B-2 has done its first trials there.

Of course, if that's all it were, perhaps the internet wouldn't buzz like it does about Area 51, a multi-acre tract of buildings and runways around the dry Groom Lake. Here are the essential bits of info:

- The past two American presidents have signed legislation exempting the NTS from having to release anything about its research, nuclear waste disposal, personnel records, etc. The Freedom of Information act does not apply to anything related to the NTS.
- Two past scientists - both now discredited badly through a variety of means - claim that when they worked at Area 51 (in the 60s, 70s, and 80s) they - hold on - worked on reverse-engineering alien spacecraft. At the time of their departures from the NTS, they were both credible, well-respected scientists. They now get painted with the "GREAT BIG NUT" brush.
- Workers sign confidentiality agreements that some lawyers believe are illegal. Workers are sent to the site for 4 day shifts via Janet Airlines, a private fleet of 737s that fly out of Vegas and go the NTS or the Tonopah Test Site further west. Security around the boarding ramp to the nondescript planes (white with orange stripe, no insignias) is very high - metal detectors, wands, armed guards, and police dogs.
- The NTS is in the middle of nowhere, geographically hidden by a variety of moutain ranges in the Pahranagat Valley. Any mountain vantage points that would allow viewing the site from within 30 miles have been closed off to visitors. The only photographic evidence we have of the area come from satellite photos from space - the first were released by the Russians.

But the place can be found. If one has a handheld GPS unit, one can use it to drive along the nearly deserted Hwy. 375 and find an unmarked gravel road (about 4 lanes wide) that disappears 13 miles through desert scrub and cacti. It is to be noted that once one is actually on this road, magnetic sensors are transmitting the size and speed of their vehicle to the guard post dead ahead. (This has been confirmed by a local researcher who was arrested last month for digging some of the sensors up and taking photographs of them - all on public land.)

At the 12 mile mark, one sees the first and last sign one will see here. It looks like this:

There aren't a lot of places in the country where the use of deadly force is authorized. Just here, I suppose, the West Wing of the White House, and probably in the locker room of the Portland Trailblazers.

Now, if one were to get to this sign, and then pause momentarily - say, to shoot some shaky video - a Ford F-150 pickup truck with two employees of EE&G (a private security firm whose only employer is the Department of Energy) drives down from its perch on a small hill nearby and keep rolling toward one until one makes a really crisp u-turn and heads the 13 miles the other way down the oddly flat and very wide gravel road. These so called "cammo dudes" carry sidearms, wear camoflauge jumpsuits, and have twin shotguns in quick release carriers in their pickups.

Of course one doesn't have to get that close to feel a little spooky. Or to see them through the continuing shaky video.

It certainly sounds like a neat place to visit. And one should probably take a rented car (in one's wife's name, for example) for greater security.

Should you still be reading, you can get a little more background on the real and imagined activities at Area 51 at this excellent, earnest - and maybe only a little nutty - site.

Oh yeah, one other thing. Fifty yards from the entrance to the unmarked road, right in the middle of Hwy. 375, was this. On whom it was used we do not know. Nor care to.

Sharon Bryan - San Diego, CA

Sharon Bryan's cat (the beautifully hirsute and husky Spencer) has an amazing trick. 30 minutes into the interview, I spotted Spencer in the middle of the living room, rising back on his haunches, reaching his front paws upward, stretching, a vertical and supplicant offering of some kind to the God of cats. He pedaled his front paws a couple of times and then settled back down. Sharon was in the middle of an answer to a question, but I never heard it, so amazed was I at the feline acrobatics. After Spencer was done, he turned around, gave me a once over and then settled back into a more normal horizontal pose on the carpet. I'll have to listen to the tape to see what Sharon had to say, but what I wouldn't give for a video of that trick.

I visited Sharon's bright San Diego apartment right at the semester end. A stack of graded essays rested on a barstool, and a higher stack - waiting for grades - waited nearby.

Sharon is a professional nomadic poet. She's been a visiting writer in a wide range of terrific places, Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Washington just to name a few. Born in Utah, educated in the northeast, and a lover of the Pacific Northwest - she calls Port Townsend, Washington, home - she's a restless soul.

Sharon has a love for anthropology and a keen desire to name and understand our role in the bigger picture, the planet, space, etc. It's equal parts science and spirituality, I think, lower case "S" on both. We talked a lot about the west, desert spaces. She told me about a superb visit to southern Utah and a prop plane tour of the geologic magic of the area.

We talked about some folks I've seen on the trip, good pals of hers. One of the great benefits of the project is passing along greetings from town to town, hearing funny stories about so-and-so back in the day, etc. And Sharon knows a lot of folks.

After I left, I regretted not following up on Sharon's time in Memphis. She talked about the shrine, Graceland. She's got a picture of Elvis in her place. I made a little cross as I passed it, hummed a little "Suspicious Minds" on the walk to the car, but if Spencer would have had me, I'd have stayed a little longer to talk about the King.

Ralph Angel - Pasadena, CA

After weeks in tranquil mountains and deserts, the arrival in Los Angeles is a little jarring. The whole "freeway nation" thing is not so hard to get used to. It's eleven lanes going every direction. Big deal. My wife has the lead foot. We have the handheld GPS unit. ("In 1.67 miles, honey, jam on the brakes and skitter across nine lanes to hit that exit. It's either Disneyland or ... you know what ... even if it's not Disneyland, too bad.") 

What's interesting about the everpresent freeways is the absolute necessity of knowing what they're called (number and name) when getting any kind of directions. Los Angelenos seem to delight in sending you on a pet path. It's impossible to get directions that don't involve you "hopping" on the 10 or the 5. Even to go to get milk, locals want to get you up on the Pomona Highway. They spend half their days looking at brake lights, and it brings them a bit of comfort to know that you will be stranded likewise.

No matter where you stand in LA or Orange County, you can see an on ramp looming in the distance. It's a little romantic, of course, to someone who loves to drive. People come here for Disneyland and Hollywood. I'm here for the feeders, the acceleration lanes, the deliciousness and precision of the lane change.

We're here to see Ralph Angel today, a terrific poet originally from Seattle, but now a long time resident of South Pasadena, a lovely neighborhood east of LA proper. As we drive through quiet streets, we spot a Rose Bowl float being constructed along Fair Oaks Avenue. We pull in and peer through a little opening, but Marty - a large man with a small man's shirt - asks us to move along. "Come back next weekend to get a look," he says. "They're going to show it then. Or you can wait till the TV."

Ralph's got a two story blue house from the 50s. Inside, he and I climb a gorgeous set of tile stairs to the main floor, but then go out the back, around, and down a slanted walkway that leads to his office. The office is 20 X 25. One wall contains a large bookshelf. He's got two large desks, one with a computer, one with pencils and legal pads. During our conversation Ralph talks about the "trance," a period that all writers seek in some way, a period of time when we are simply writing, channeling the information. We're making our little things, poems, stories. Art. Ralph says, "If you asked me my name, I wouldn't have an answer."

We go out in the back yard for some photos, and I make him preen and posture more than either he or I would like. What can I tell you. The camera has a lot of dials and whozits. He tells me a bit about the neighborhood, about the young men who built this fence, planted these trees. It's been fifteen years in this place.