For Love - I Would Split Open

Form Is Never More Than An Extension Of Content.

As I Get Older, I Recognize That My Thinking About Poetry May Or May Not Have Anything Actively To Do With My Actual Work As A Poet. This Strikes Me As No Thing Cynically Awry But Rather Seems Again Instance Of That Hapless Or Possibly Happy Fact, We Do Not As Humans Seem Necessarily Aware Of What We Are Physically Or Psychically Doing At All!

I Did However Used To Think, You Know, In The Woods Walking, And As A Kid Playing In The Woods, That There Was A Kind Of Immanence There — That Woods, And Places Of That Order, Had A Sense, A Kind Of Presence, That You Could Feel; That There Was Something Peculiarly, Physically Present, A Feeling Of Place Almost Conscious ... Like God. It Evoked That.

Still, No One Finally Knows What A Poet Is Supposed Either To Be Or To Do. Especially In This Country, One Takes On The Job—because All That One Does In America Is Considered A "job"—with No Clear Sense As To What Is Required Or Where One Will Ultimately Be Led. In That Respect, It Is As Particular An Instance Of A "calling" As One Might Point To. For Years I've Kept In Mind, "many Are Called But Few Are Chosen." Even So "called," There Were No Assurances That One Would Be Answered.

Suddenly The Whole Imagination Of Writing And Editorial And Newspaper And All These Presumptions About Who Am I Reading This, And Who Else Other People May Be, And All That, It's So Grimly Brutal!