I was born in Oklahoma City in 1947 and moved to rural Leflore County shortly thereafter, ranging freely between the houses of grandparents in Howe and Heavener until my father bought a house on the G.I. Bill. I attended elementary school in Heavener through sixth grade. The Heavener Runestone made a permanent impression, as if you could inscribe characters in a wilderness where people might later puzzle over their meaning. Maybe that was my first poetic inspiration. My Sunday school teacher, Gloria Farley, wrote the definitive book on the Heavener Runestone. My paternal grandfather taught me to fish at age four, because I was the only grandchild who could sit still. I feel fishing and verse have much in common, including observation, patience, and perseverance.

My family border-hopped for four generations between Oklahoma and Arkansas, many of them buried in rural Crawford County, Arkansas, including my 2G grandfather who was “killed by the bushwhackers.” My father was hired by the Shipley Baking Company, and we moved to Fort Smith in 1958. That same year I attended Scout camp on the Buffalo River and was “hooked,” you might say, on the Ozarks. I was fortunate in having an English teacher named John Taylor in high school, who turned me on to liteature and introduced me tothe work of Vance Randolph. My poetry was first published in The Litsmith, the high school literary magazine, and the Southwest Times Record. I would often spend my lunch money at Vivian’s Bookshop. Those books still collect dust in my study: Words for the Wind by Theordore Roethke, The Collected Poems of Stephen Crane, and a collection of haiku published in Tokyo.

At Arkansas Tech I pursued a BA degree, majoring in music with an English Minor. I discovered facsimile editions of William Blake’s prophetic books in the school library. B.C. Hall taught some writing courses and helped me with my poetry. James Whitehead offered me an assistantship at the U of A that proved to be Frost’s “road not taken.” I chose instead to attend Northwestern University in Chicago for a master’s degree in music.