Howie Good, On Reading

"I wasn't a reader as a kid. I was way too restless to sit still and read. I did daydream a lot, though, making up stories in which I was generally the hero. I suppose all this imaginative activity contributed to my becoming a writer. It also -- and earlier -- contributed to my becoming a reader. I entered new and better daydreams through reading than I could find on TV or make up on my own. This isn't to suggest that reading for me was or is primarily an escape. It isn't. Rather, it's a kind of liberation from mental and physical contraints. You sit still while reading, but you can go anywhere in your head."


{Howie Good is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as 23 print and digital poetry chapbooks.}