Some of you may have encountered a wee chapbook of paragraphs from State Street Press called MINT that was first printed in 1991. This gathering contains some (not all) of those same pieces as well as more recent ones.

That collection contained the following Author's Note:

'I think of these pieces as being simple paragraphs rather than prose poems, though a few might sneak into the prose poem category, were they traveling on their own. The paragraph, standing by itself, has a lovely pocket-sized quality. It garnishes the page, as mint garnishes a plate. Many people say (foolishly, of course), they don't like poetry, but I've never heard anyone say that they don't like paragraphs. It would be like disliking five-minute increments on the clock.'�

Well, I stand by that. I still think of these little things we write as being paragraphs, in all their honorable, minor dignity, and I still believe the paragraph form has something larger to give us, if we let it. And, I am still having trouble, in my drought-stricken Texas earth, growing the lavish, meandering mint bed I would like to grow.

- naomi shihab nye