In the introduction to Modern Traumas he recalls “in high school I remember reading about the plight of some elderly widows in Eastern India who were abandoned to eke out hand-to-mouth existences in temple cities in the states of Orissa and Bengal. Their condition was a telling reminder of the poverty, caste and illiteracy related oppressions that are still practiced and which continue to dot (or more accurately blot) certain regions of the world’s oldest civilizations. Photographs of these shriveled women with their vacant stares moved me to write in February 1985 a poem titled The Widow in which I tried to capture this sense of hopelessness.”