The poetry of "Talking Points" is an edited version of the hundreds of "poetic essays" I've written in my adult lifetime. As would be expected, I've lived through several different "lens periods" in my life. From the political to the spiritual. From the romantic, to the downright delusional. Each poem represents "where my mind was" at that given time in my history. For example, the poem "Johannesburg Blues" was written about the strife in South Africa, before Nelson Mandela would emerge. The poem, "The Spirit Horse," was written to honor my late Cherokee grandfather. During the seventies, when I was in my twenties, I read a survey from Random House Publishing, about the reading habits of different groups of Americans. When it came to poetry, the survey read, "College educated females, forty-five and over" were the largest reading group. I thought to myself, "Oh God, that's the end of my career!"