David Chorlton came to Phoenix from Europe in 1978 with his wife Roberta, an Arizona native. He quickly became comfortable with the climate while adjusting to the New World took longer. Writing and reading poetry have helped in that respect, as has exposure to the American small presses. He still lives with his European past in mind of art galleries and very old music, and desert present as Arizona’s landscape and wildlife have become increasingly important to him both as a source of pleasure and a measure of how precarious the natural world is. Thirty years ago he regarded the idea of “nature poetry” as one tainted with sentimentality but today it appears ever more necessary as an element of resistance to the conformity that Edward Abbey confronted so well in his writings on the Southwest.