Excerpt from Introduction, by Barry McKinnon: If sex is the subject, where begin? What occasion within the subject's range prompts a poet to write? This may be what the literary snoop wants to know but need not know. The poem becomes evidence of its own detail / energy and in some instances, evidence of the poet's struggle and inability to get to it. Sex at 31 was written, if I can remember, in about a week. But I can't forget the intensity of the emotional mess I was in: fear, guilt, threat of loss - the sexual heat of jealousy. It wasn't a game. It wasn't a subject. It wasn't writing. But I knew my life depended on its articulation in poetry. Sex at 31 was about as close as I could hope to get.