As part of our ongoing celebration of the magazine’s fiftieth year in print, this month’s Dog-Eared Page features poems previously published in The Sun.
— Ed.
There must be others out there, I thought, as blessed and damaged as I am — and as obsessed with poetry. It was 1976, and I had two more years to go in that prison in the Arizona desert. I intended to spend them as I had the previous four: writing dawn to dusk each day, scribbling then scratching out words, dictionary next to me, consumed by the rich legacy of language, its ancient and modern permutations. I often had to pause to catch my breath until I could resume. This is what poetry did to me. It was also responsible for my survival.
