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Random Gamp
The Man With the Red Umbrella For years I wanted to write about a man with an umbrella. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know what he wanted. I just had the umbrella, and I couldn’t get rid of it. The name came later, and it came from Dickens. In Martin Chuzzlewit there’s…
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Henry Strauss
The Man Who Became a Boy Henry Strauss started out as a grown man. I was tearing the walls out of what would become our living room, living in the middle of the work, the way you do, with something always torn open and nothing quite finished. And I started writing about a man who…
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Anna Kate
Where Anna Kate Came From She started out as my daughter. I wrote the poem years ago, before I ever stood in front of a classroom, and the girl on the dock was Aleigha. Not by name, the name in the poem was Anna Kate from the start, but every time I read it back,…
