Each one of us comes from somewhere on earth--a village, a
town, a city, a suburb, a settlement--and that "somewhere" de-
fines us profoundly. A lot happened in that place before we came
into this world--not only historically but also geologically and
ecologically. When a poet talks about the ground beneath her or
his feet, that ground speaks both to realities that go far back in
time and ones that exist in the present, palpitating moment. An
integral part of that matrix of realities is the political heritage at-
tached to a place. America, as it revels in the new and improved,
would seem to banish such a heritage, but politics, like place,
never goes away. Poems inescapably reflect the fact that we cre-
ate geography and politics and are created by them.

Poems don't begin in poets' heads. They begin with the earth upon
which poets live. Nothing exists without that sustaining ground and
poets are not ones to forget that. Indeed, poets revel in earthliness
and earthiness: Their task, in many ways, is to take the full measure of
what it is to live on earth. They seek to take nothing for granted and to
touch the particular vibrancy of any patch of that ground--or asphalt
or floor--beneath their feet. Any place in this world is rich in actuali-
ties--geographical, environmental, historical, personal, and politi-
cal. Poets summon up the welter of feelings that adhere to places.

That ground beneath the feet holds all sorts of surprises, however
well we think we know it. Gary Snyder "Thin Ice" confronts one
small but resonant moment:

-279-