These poems started with a bag of children's beach toys--primary-colored alphabet sand-molds--and a quiet afternoon. They ended up needing a spreadsheet to keep track of the first words. ""Love"" is the ""L"" word for all the disorderly abecedarians because it creates a thread with which to gather all the ribbons of art, religion, human cruelty, anger, and the infinite intrusions by the random that both buffer us from a frequently distressing world and buffet us with that same world's constant noise. Because the proper abecedarians have a more orderly arrangement with the universe simply by...