I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

My friend Jeffrey and I slipped away at flutes of champagne.

Both of us looked spiffy in black suits.

We were at a book award ceremony.

It was my first New York gala.

And so I felt like Cinderella at the ball.

Feeling a little out of place, we took self-deprecating shots at ourselves and laughed.

Then a very tall man, a fan of Jeffrey's fiction, approached with the question.

He wanted to know when Jeffrey visited his small town in Pennsylvania.

Jeffrey said he had never.

But, the man said, you must have.

In your novel, you placed the laundromat next to the pharmacy across from the square where a member of my church sells her apple pies that draw dozens at the

farmer's market. Jeffrey repeated that his story was made up, a work of fiction. The man became

belligerent. Oh, you writers, then stormed away. The encounter reminded me of the premise of a once popular book in

creative writing classes. Its author asked the question, who is better equipped to describe a town,

a long-time resident, or a passenger on a train who, passing through, only gets a brief glimpse of the town's residence,

baseball field, schools, and homes.

While the year-round local can name the streets, her neighbor's names, and probably its history,

the author concludes the traveler has the edge.

Acts of memory, he argues, do not compare to acts of the imagination.

Today's deeply satisfying poem arrives from an exacting eye.

The poet's kinetic imagination and mental roaming feel gorgeously reputorial and cinematic,

...