Conversations and Poetry's title derives from the author's refreshing blend of chat about his life and interests--and about the nature of the process of composition--with rich, deep poems that a lifetime of training in observing people at close quarters has brought him. "Like Theodore Roethke, " writes Bernard Dick, author of "The Star-Spangled Screen" and other volumes of criticism, "Milano's heart keeps open house, welcoming the reader to a world where the ordinary is transformed into exquisitely rendered images. He can take such homely details as night crawlers, a beach, and a New York street and turn them into art. There is no doubt that we are in the presence of a born poet.