For most of my life, I thought I would become a writer of fiction.Short stories actually. Like Hemingway. Or, later, like Carver.

I’ve only taken one creative writing class, ever, a life-changing short story seminar with Richard Ford (Carver’s friend!!). At that time, Ford was finishing a sequel to The Sportswriter, his acclaimed 1986 novel. By the end of the year, he had won a Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day and I was certain I would be his successor.

I even sent a story to a big literary magazine. One. Once. I received a hand-written response…while they couldn’t publish the one I sent, I should submit others very soon. I thought they said that to all the boys (they didn’t) so I didn’t follow up.

And that was it. I never submitted another short story to anyone. I still don’t know why.

I had a big New York agent for a while, repping one of my novel manuscripts all over New York City (a long story for a different day…it didn’t work out), but I never pushed another story.

When I published Sometimes I Still Pray: A Family Album earlier this year, a book of poems about my extended family that included a few prose vignettes as well as a full-blown short story, I had an epiphany: the impulse had never really left me. It just lay dormant for a while.

I also realized that I’d been writing stories, off and on, all along. Among the lyrical poems, formal poems, angry poems, self-loathing poems, love poems…I’d been writing story poems.

So I collected some story poems into a folder, wrote a slew of new ones, and let them organize themselves into…something. A group portrait…of America. In fact, all together, they reminded me of Robert Frank’s photographs in The Americans, the photobook he published in 1958. Poem snapshots.

Of course, poetry and photography do different things. But I felt that I had created something similar—a picture of America in a particular historical moment. And I had some actual photos laying around too, color landscapes that were nowhere near as good as Frank’s work (God no) but might be useful as counterpoint.

And that’s the origin of my new book, which I’ve decided to call The Americans: Poems and Images because Frank can’t own that title, nor can he own the impulse to bring this whole crazy country together between two covers. That seems to me like work we should all be doing, in our own ways.

Story-tellers all.

The Americans: Poems and Images is available in print and for Kindle.