Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

The problem for me still today is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

The rite of passage of learning to build a fire that will burn all night with one match is not an insignificant one in my husband's family and I grew up camping and backpacking. I love to camp.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13 and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.

Prior to the passage of the Patriot Act it was very difficult - often impossible - for us to share information with the Central Intelligence Agency with NSA with the other intelligence agencies and likewise for them to share information with us.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage I think that lead us from an innocent world of contentment drunkenness and good humor to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

Just touching that old tree was truly moving to me because when you touch these trees you have such a sense of the passage of time of history. It's like you're touching the essence the very substance of life.

With the perspective afforded by the passage of time where does 9/11 rank as a turning point in our national history? For the victims and their families innocents going about their lives suddenly and brutally murdered no other day can ever matter as much.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.

Prior to passage of Obamacare Americans spoke out against the individual mandate they didn't want to change the health care they had they didn't want a 3 000-page bill that empowered 15 Washington bureaucrats to decide the future of the doctor-patient relationship.