A Word Is Elegy To What It

The Earth Forgives The Previous Year Every Year.

Poetry Is A Fireplace In Summer Or A Fan In Winter.

One May Prefer Spring And Summer To Autumn And Winter, But Preference Is Hardly To The Point. The Earth Turns, And We Live In The Grain Of Nature, Turning With It.

Someone In Ireland Asked Me How Many Republican Poets There Were In The U.s., And I Thought Maybe Two. Maybe There Are 10,000 Poets, And Maybe There Are Two Republicans Among Them.

I Think That Were I In The Middle Of An Obsession To Write About, Say, Sudden Oak Death In California Or My Grandchildren Or Time And Memory And How They Look When You Get To Be In Your Sixties, And I Thought, "well, Yes But People Are Dying Every Day In Baghdad," I Wouldn't Feel Guilty About Not Writing About Baghdad If I Didn't Have Any Good Ideas About How To Write About It.