Always Our Wars Have Been Our Confessions

Outrage And Possibility Are In All The Poems We Know.

Those Who Speak Of Our Culture As Dead Or Dying Have A Quarrel With Life, And I Think They Cannot Understand Its Terms, But Must Endlessly Repeat The Projection Of Their Own Desires.

No One Wants To Read Poetry. You Have To Make It Impossible For Them To Put The Poem Down--impossible For Them To Stop Reading It, Word After Word. You Have To Keep Them From Closing The Book.

I Think There Is A Choice Possible To Us At Any Moment, As Long As We Live. But There Is No Sacrifice. There Is A Choice, And The Rest Falls Away. Second Choice Does Not Exist. Beware Of Those Who Talk About Sacrifice.

The 'idea' For The Poem, Which May Come As An Image Thrown Against Memory, As A Sound Of Words That Sets Off A Traveling Of Sound And Meaning, As A Curve Of Emotion (a Form) Plotted By Certain Crises Of Events Or Image Or Sound, Or As A Title Which Evokes A Sense Of Inner Relations; This Is The First 'surfacing' Of The Poem. Then A Period Of Stillness May Follow.