City of Tall Grasses

Yesterday, late afternoon, talking books with Nathaniel Popkin on a sidewalk in East Falls, I thought again of how place defines us—the stories we find, the sounds we tunnel into. Our mandate, as writers, is to live first, to see deeply, to sit at the corner while people walk by or to find the two lost tulips in the city of tall grasses. Our privilege is to imagine well beyond the things that we see—to yield to the seduction of dreams.