ANTLER: It's important to me in that it's always flowing. Coming here regularly is one of the only things that makes it possible for me to live in Milwaukee. I can experience solitude down here, especially during winter after midnight when it's snowing. It's great to come and have coffee. I can stay for hours.

In winter I like being able to cross over to the other side, experience walking on the ice and lying on the ice... and in summer, with all the birds - I come because I love birds. I've been writing poems that have to do with the river ever since I started living here. So it is something that entered my poetry early on, and became a part of my life. I have snapping turtle experiences, big snapping turtles. And I saw a snake right down there a couple of days ago. I don't see snakes as much anymore.

PORCUPINE: Is there a divide that surfaces in your poetry between the river, what it represents as a sanctuary for you, and the rest of Milwaukee as an industrial city?

ANTLER: Yeah - and I like that word sanctuary a lot, it seems like a key word. When I first moved here, the rest of Milwaukee ceased to exist. I never went downtown anymore. I didn't go into the stores because I didn't have any money. So I would just come down here and read. When I went up north to live, I disengaged from the reality of living in the city. There's something about having a river nearby, even a lake, that's very helpful to me. But every writer is different.

PORCUPINE: Watching the river, seeing that blue heron land, I somehow feel restored. It's like a refuge here. But I wonder what it says about one's ability to appreciate the realities of the city. Do you think you could be a poet in, say, downtown Manhattan?

ANTLER: Sure. I think you would see the human drama, and the skyscrapers standing in long streets like endless Jehovahs, as Ginsberg says... confirming the human tribe and its domain among millions of people. Both worlds exist. I like the river, but I don't reject the human tribe. I don't think it's a black and white thing, the natural world being just this river escape.

All we know for sure is
all places that exist
were once one place.
All we know for certain is
all the beings that exist
or will exist
or have existed
were originally all together
in an infinitesimal dot.
All we can know for sure is
if humans went from dugout canoes
to spaceships to the Moon
in 10,000 years,
in 10,000 years humans can go from
spaceships to the Moon
to Moons made into spaceships
traveling to other galaxies.

- from Know for Sure

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