“Poems 1959-2009_I turn into the man they photograph.I think I'll ask him for his autograph.He's older than I am and more distinguished.The beauty of the boy has been extinguished.He smiles a lot and then not.Hauteur is the new hot.He tilts his nose up and looks imperious.He wants to make sure he looks serious.He smiles at the photographer but notThe camera. He thinks cold is the look that's hot.You know the poems. It's an experience.The way that Shylock is a Shakespearience.A Jew found frozen on the mountain at the howling summit,Immortally preserved singing to the dying planet from it.”

“I want Sam to stop liking Craig.Now I guess maybe you think that’s because I am jealous of him. I’m not. Honest. It’s just that Craig doesn’t really listen to her when she talks. I don’t mean that he’s a bad guy because he’s not. It’s just that he always looks distracted.It’s like he would take a photograph of Sam, and the photograph would be beautiful. And he would think the reason the photograph was beautiful was because of how he took it. If I took it, I would know that the only reason it’s beautiful is because of Sam.I just think it’s bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees the girl is better than the girl actually is. And I think it’s bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera. It’s very hard for me to see Sam feel better about herself just because an older boy sees her that way.”

“I just think it's bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees her is better than she actually is. And I think it's bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera.”

“When she looked at him now, she couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the boy he had been. His smile was the only piece of baggage he had carried with him from boyhood into manhood.”

“It's my partner," he said, smiling. It didn't look easy for him, that smile, but it transformed him from a thin-faced freckled man with a blade of a nose to a man with sexiness to spare.”

“I look at the field, and I think about the boy who just made the touchdown. I think that these are the glory days for that boy, and this moment will just be another story someday because all the people who make touchdowns and home runs will become somebody's dad. And when his children look at his yearbook photograph, they will think that their dad was rugged and handsome and looked a lot happier than they are. I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.”