from the Author's Note "When I put a book of new poems together I go
through the poems to determine whether their direction is consistent. Those
that are out of line are left behind. The poems collected in Snows Gone By
were written over a thirty-eight-year period, from 1964-2002. The older
poems have in common the fact that they were left out of earlier books.
They were, I thought then, inconsistent with what was going on in my life
or work in those periods. Collected here, I realize, the poems together
probably give a better idea of my total work than any of my other books
have--they present a life & work that has been what it's been, with little
need for consistency." The François Villon ballad that provided the title
to this book (from his "Greater Testament") is immediately preceded by
lines that speak of the agonies of age & death. The ballad asks what has
become of many famed & beautiful women already gone in Villon's time, &
each stanza ends with the refrain, the answer to his question, asking where
the snows of yesterday have gone. As Bill Brown once said, "I knew he was
dead, but I had to keep telling him the story, I had to keep talking to
him."