The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren't any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood.

Noises and smells, those can bring back powerful memories. I remember when I was going to school one Fourth of July, and there were a lot of fireworks going off. I knew that I was in Richmond. I knew that I was a college student. But I thought people were shooting at me.

I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.

One of the things my service in Iraq did give me was this freedom from fear of failure or any kind of expectations that I had to take a standard path.

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.

With the World War II era, there's so much written material to draw on. When you go back to the 14th century, you have to imagine more.

Since before the Civil War, crosses have indeed garnished veterans' memorials from the North to the South, from Arlington to Normandy, and from the South Pacific to the Middle East.