Ms. Olds: Yes. I didn’t decide it just was so interesting to me. And loving dance and sexuality and — I think, almost every poem of mine that’s a sexual poem is a sexual love poem. I don’t think I’ve written much in the area — is there such a thing as “the area of pure sex”? I haven’t gone there.

But I just wrote about the things that interested me the most. A poem would come get more to me, and so I just wrote what came out of my pen, out of my arm, connected to my soul and mind and body. The fact that it hadn’t been done much was like — oh! It was like — I don’t know — it was exciting to be writing, maybe, the first poem about a diaphragm. I didn’t know that until someone told me that. 8212Bob Popik, August 2017, Baltimore, Maryland