A poet who walks and memorizes . . .

from: Kilen, Mike. "Bard's Dreams Channel Poetry," The Des Moines Register, 14 October 2007.

Joe Plum lives in the wooded hills of rural Monroe County in a home built from scraps without electricity or plumbing.

It's no environmental statement. Plum, 55, has never had indoor plumbing. A man asked him once if he lived "off the grid." Plum didn't know what that meant.

He wakes from dreams and walks into the woods, sometimes for hours, reciting and memorizing the poems that come to him in his sleep. . . .