Book excerpt: In 2002, our Nation was unsure of its future, panicked by its recent past, and struggling to come to terms with a mounting war and the ever-changing colors of terror. Through it all two poets in a newfound friendship felt it necessary to stop the chaos and share their thoughts, views, struggles, fears, frustrations, and daily triumphs with each other. Sometimes scathing and brash, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes self-assured, the conversational threads have been woven into a constant, furious tapestry covering the landscape of the American South, the desert Southwest and all the way to the cold mountains of Switzerland. These letters represent a refusal to submit and a wild shout to the heavens that art can still matter.