This is not the first time Ron Silliman has thrown a log onto the fire of my motivation to write. No, the first time he did this was in a letter to me in the late 1970's in response to a stapled chapbook Alan Davies had published of my writing. At that time my fire didn't need a log- it needed a match, some newspaper and a few hefty twigs. Ron supplied much more than that by including a work of mine in poetics in his anthology, "In The American Tree." Recently that respected anthology has been published in a new edition that included new bio notes by the writers, including a very nice memoir by Michael Gottlieb.

Thanks, Ron for your fine vote of confidence. Now all I have to do is live up to it!