I’m so very happy to have another poem from my current manuscript-in-progress, Wild Kingdom, in the latest issue of Pleiades. The poem, “Portrait of an Administrator with Strategic Plan and Office Supplies,” came out of my study of Larry Levis: his handling of narrative, his excellent ear. I wrote the first draft in late November 2016, when I was rereading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (like so many others around the country, I suspect), and eventually I began to incorporate little bits of Arendt’s language into my poem. Ultimately, although the poem began with personal experience, it became a political text (perhaps, the personal is indeed always political). In any case, finding a balance between Arendt’s words and my own was a really fun challenge. And I am so grateful that the poem has found such a good home, at one of my favorite literary journals.