Transcript

I went from a public high school in excess of 3500 students to a small liberal arts Catholic college of 250, including graduate schools.  As part of freshman orientation I went on a bus tour of Chicago.  I'd lived near the city all my life but I'd only ever seen small parts of it.       I remember at one point we stopped to stretch our legs on one of the bridges over the Chicago River.  One moment I was gazing down at the water, the next I was scrambling for pen and paper.  To this day I feel that I didn't write "River Town" so much as I wrote it down.      Over the next four years I would be fortunate enough to experience similar moments.  I spent the fall semester of my junior year in a study abroad program in the United Kingdom.  Included was a ten day tour of England and Scotland.  I wrote most of the poems from that time during that tour.      And now I offer them to you the reader.  I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.