Bring To Me, It Said, Continual Proof

I Make Myself Up From Everything I Am, Or Could Be. For Many Years I Was More Desire Than Fact. When I Stop Becoming, That’s When I Worry.

If The Motive Of Writing Is For Some People A Kind Of Exercise In Dirty Laundry, That's One Thing. I've Always Thought Of My Poems As Meant To Be Overheard, As I Think All Of These Poems Are. It Seems To Me If You Get Experience Right, Even Your Most Painful Or Humiliating Experiences - If You Get Those Experiences Right For Yourself And Make Discoveries As You Go Along And Find For Them Some Formal Glue - They Will Be Poems For Others.

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.

Although I Know It's Unfair, I Reveal Myself One Mask At A Time.

A Moment Of Something Between Acceptance And Resignation Of One's Smallness In The World.