For his part, Garfunkel said he's still working, writing poems, putting together a book and singing.

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Had fate taken a different twist, Romero, age 39, might have been writing poems instead of designing buildings.

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As for his writing, it passed from poems that had been an attempt to write some small and essentially truthful things out of the depths of himself (a self that was essentially unsure, tentative, indecisive) to often magisterial, and sometimes vapid prose: pronouncements upon the state of culture, and on how culture could stave off anarchy.

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And when not reading he was writing: letters, diaries, poems, 250, 000 words during the war alone.

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With each year, and even student grouping, we find ourselves selecting novels, short stories, poems or even reading and writing skills to meet the specific needs of our students.

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Yet he has kept on writing with an optimistic edge to his realism, and has seen his poems achieve international fame.

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