…balancing The Wish To Be Lost With

The Trouble With Poetry Is That It Encourages The Writing Of More Poetry.

It's A Good Thing To Get Poetry Off The Shelves And More Into Public Life.

Usually The Poems Are Written In One Sitting. There's Always A Groping Towards Some Satisfying Ending. But I'd Say The Hardest Part Is Not Writing. Once The Writing Starts, It's Too Pleasurable To Think Of It As A Difficulty.

A Motto I've Adopted Is, If At First You Don't Succeed, Hide All Evidence That You Ever Tried.

I Started Moving Away From Poets Like Wallace Stevens And Hart Crane And Started Reading Poets Like, Again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, And The British Poets Who Were Imported Through That Important Anthology Put Together By Alvarez - And Those Would Include Thom Gunn And Ted Hughes. And I Think These Poets Gave Me Assurance That There Were Other Ways To Write Besides The Rather Involuted Style Of High Modernism Whose High Priests Were Pound, Eliot And Stevens, And Crane Perhaps.