Winas

"There are people who believe you have to break bread or drink with a person on an on-going basis before you can call that person a friend. I don't subscribe to this point of view. I never met the late William Wantling, arguably one of the best poets to graduate from the U.S. penal system, but we corresponded regularly until his death in 1974, and I considered him a close friend. I met Hank less than a handful of times, but he too was a friend of mine. Friends are there when you need them; at a low point in my life, when friends are never more important, Hank wrote me and said:
"I know you are down and out, low on coin, spiritually molested like the rest of us; little chance but to hang on by the fingernails, work a line or two down on paper, and walk down the street and breathe the air of this shit life they've put upon us and that we've put upon ourselves."

on the big fella . com