“Walking in Amsterdam, I experienced the Dutch as singularly focused, and solid; people occupying space unequivocally, gracefully, even as they were moving through it. One aspect of traveling for me is feeling awash in ambivalences. I want glints of how it feels to be inside the foreign culture looking out, while at the same time I know it is ridiculous to think I will be privy, and further, I will not know even the extent to which I do not know. It’s not as hard as it sounds, all this uncertainty. But, there I was, senses heightened, trying to be attentive. And then there were ducks, so the ducks went in the poem. The poem’s catalyst is also the first sentence: a sturdy rhythm and a twist that got at something of that Dutchness. If there had been no ducks, perhaps there would have been no poem.”
—Michele Glazer