the editor of Streetfare Journal, a project that installs poems on placards inside buses in 14 American cities, George Evans may have done more to bring poetry to the average person than any other literary figure today. With a probable readership in the millions, "I get an almost universally enthusiastic response. And from ordinary people, for whom poetry is completely outside their daily lives." His own poetry encompasses his wide range of experience, from running away from home and living on the streets of Pittsburgh at age 12, to a stint in Vietnam, to his recent years in Northern California. The shape of his poetry has changed tremendously too, from verse to his current prose poems. "It seems to me that every book should be different from the last one completely. I have a hard time with the notion that one should have a steady voice. The form gets exhausted for me. My subject matter has been steady, though. I've always written about the same themes: life, death, love and war. "Poetry is not what I do. It's who I am." In this, Emily Dickinson provided early inspiration. "She lived a life in which the poetry was everything. That really had an influence on me, that she wasn't afraid to live that life. I don't know if she was happy to live in obscurity, but it wouldn't have added to her work if she hadn't. As it was, she was a very brave human being and she got better and better the more isolated she became. How could that not influence a person?" When it comes, after all the waiting in darkness over many days, over years and centuries, all who saw it last will be gone, as all who see it now will be. When it dips and its tail flares a million miles of light, ask yourself how much pain is worth it, because when this comes again you will be nothing. Nothing you know will exist, nothing you felt, no one you touched. When you see this streak blurred like a spotlight in clouds against black infinity, hesitate, then pick up your guns and go on, but never blame this moment for what might have been. What might have been is always at hand a crucial second before passing, in reach long enough to change the course. There's nothing romantic about love. Romantic is a description of ways in which we treat one another, but love is the equal of death and life -- everything ends and everything starts at its touch. George Evan's book, "Sudden Dreams," is published by Coffee House Press. photograph by Ho Anh Thai