From the Forward:
"As a teacher of interdisciplinary humanities, I became acquainted with the lives and works of people from a wide variety of human endeavors. Over a lifetime of reading, looking, and listening I was fascinated by each one of them and wondered what kind of life lay beneath their science, art, politics, or whatever. When I began writing poems to summarize my experience with them, I realized that one simply couldn't say anything one wished. There were actual biographical details not to be ignored."