The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf not gun cabinet or wallet.

In my books and in romance as a genre there is a positive uplifting feeling that leaves the reader with a sense of encouragement and hope for a brighter future - or a brighter present.

Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive fun entertainment.

My Botswana books are positive and I've never really sought to deny that. They are positive. They present a very positive picture of the country. And I think that that is perfectly defensible given that there is so much written about Africa which is entirely negative.

I think people in Botswana are pleased that my books paint a positive picture of their lives and portray the country as being very special. They've made a great success of their country and the people are fed up with the constant reporting of only the problems and poverty of the continent. They welcome something which puts the positive side.

But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.

When children are very young you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that not gloss over them.

I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy with kings queens dukes and court politics but of course like what I was explaining before about making the science make sense you have to make the politics make sense too.

Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess.

Publishing the lyric books poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel read 2 000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles theses and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction but often it's really just about the money the perceived prestige.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

But for me being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.

However poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago when books of poems were best-sellers.

All those authors there most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side that's the prose side that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom on the stairs everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there looking at art books and reading poetry.

I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion but in fact what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call but I wrote letters I wrote short stories I wrote books.

A book is a fragile creature it suffers the wear of time it fears rodents the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.