(Highlights) ALICE NOTLEY
/Poet
I wrote "I the People" in about 1985. I was living in New York and it was one of those years when it was an anniversary of the Constitution…My first husband had died a few years previously, and I didn't feel like I was part of any "we." But I did feel that I was "the people," somehow. So, I just changed it to "I the People." It seemed to me that that could be something that anyone might say to themselves, I the people.