When I was sixteen, my English teacher took me to hear Robert Frost recite his poetry at nearby Wilson College in Chambersburg Pa. From that day forward I had a passion for poetry.

I worked and worked on my own poems until one day, when I was in my forties, and during a major crisis in my life, I broke through into a subconscious level from which poems began to flow in full bloom.

I wrote then, and still write, to figure out where I am, to deal with joy, pain, dreams and memory, the passing of time, the scraps and pieces of a life.

It is often surprising when someone tells me my...