Better To Be Furious At One Thing,

Now And Again I Feel The Astonishment Of Being Alive Like This, In This Body.

Poetry Does So Many Different Things, It's Difficult To Say Anything Definitive About Its Role, Which Of Course Varies From Culture To Culture. It Can Range From Being Stories Of The Tribe To The Private Lyric, To Being As W.h. Auden Said "the Clear Expression Of Mixed Feelings" To Nonsense Verse.

I Love What's Left After Love Has Been Tested.

I Wrote Poetry For Seven Or Eight Years, Maybe Longer, Before I Could Say I Was A Poet. If People Asked, I'd Say I Wrote Poetry; I Wouldn't Go Further. I Was In My Mid- To Late-thirties Before I Felt That I Was A Poet, Which I Think Meant That I Had Begun To Embody My Poems In Some Way. I Wasn't Just A Writer Of Them. Hard To Say What, As A Poet, My Place In The World Is. Some Place Probably Between Recognition And Neglect.

Exaggerated Sunsets / Splashed With Rain, Odd Collisions / Of Roots, Animals, Seeds. / I Didn't Like A Thing I Saw, / So Much Effort To Be Strange.