Two years ago, Frank Fontis, the caretaker of Tennessee Williams’ property in Key West, was murdered. It was an especially vicious killing. He was shot at point-blank range late at night in the living quarters of a railroad museum he operated on the island. It was a curious affair.

Truman was a great jazz buff. Peggy Lee was one of his favorite singers. So, I called up Peggy who was a friend of mine and I said, “I’m here with Truman and we’d love to take you to dinner. Are you free tomorrow?”

The twelve months ending in May, 1957 are counted as the 2500th year of the Buddhist Era, and they have been a holy occasion for the millions of Buddhists in Asia. The big moment was last year at the May full moon, a time that is always celebrated as the triple anniversary of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and departure from this world.

In June 1990 I found myself in Romania again: in Constanta. Another television assignment. A survey conducted by the French Antenne Deux gave me a chance to show off my knowledge of my native land. We went around asking women how they had gotten by in the years of the dictatorship. 

HIS FATHER called him Sunday, for the day he was born. But he hated the name, thought it churchy and effeminate, and as soon as he was old enough, he became someone else. That was his way. At the time when we were friends, before distance and hardship and repulsion intervened, he called himself Wilson Obote. He had spent most of the first half of his life in combat, as a fighter of shifting allegiances—sometimes a government soldier, sometimes a rebel—in his country’s civil wars.

You must have seen them: these small towns and tiny villages of my homeland. They have learned one day by heart and they scream it out into the sunlight over and over again like great gray parrots. Near night though they grow preternaturally pensive. 

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.

In New York I was already aware of both the lady and her attributes, and on leaving for France in the spring of 1949 was determined to know her. I arrived like any other Francophile tourist with intentions of spending one summer. But from the outset that insular nation contradictorally greeted me with open arms: within a month I knew and—so much more important!—was known by most of the musical milieu I have frequented since.

When people say “I’ve stopped living” do they mean that they’re numb with grief? In dire health? Having menopause? Continually drugged or drunk? But these conditions are part of living, they just don’t revolve around love affairs or money. What’s more, all artists “stop living” in order to comment on living. Art is a suspension of life. You can’t write a poem about tears in your eyes with tears in your eyes, the salt water would smudge the ink.