CENTER SPAN, POEMS AND LETTERS, is a wide ranging collection stretching back over forty years when in 1981 I wrote the enclosed letter to Kurt Vonnegut and became serious about writing. Many were read at open mike nights in Chicago bars, others were published in local Florida magazines. They are mostly story poems on themes of sailing, childhood memories, grief and loss, a stab or two at defining poetry, and of course exploring the age-old tension between love and death.