Tom Crawford

“Like boys of my working-class, WWII generation of wieners and pork & beans and not a book in the house, I was thrown in the river, the Flint River in fact, long before I could swim. You come up out of the dirty water sputtering and flailing, sort of grateful for having survived your first rite of passage into manhood. I think it might have set the tone for the next 55 years.  Made me into a scrapper for sure, and bull-headed about whatever I happen to undertake. Poetry, the writing of it, certainly is not for the faint-hearted. I worked as a switchman on the Southern Pacific Railroad, I’ve built houses, raised goats, taught English in America, China, and South Korea—all difficult undertakings, but none that hold a candle to making a good poem.”