How I Got Introduced to On Our Backs, Alaska, and Astronomical Poetry

All Along the GirlTower, 1981

A love poem brought me to On Our Backs. A great erotic gust that picked me up and dropped me down in rich dirt like Dorothy Gale.

I was twenty-two. I had one credit left to graduate from college, my “hard” science requirement. I’d transferred to U.C. Santa Cruz from Cal State Long Beach, where activism and adventure were an easy fit. But U.C.S.C. still e…