I Listen To Jazz About Three Hours

My Earliest Poems Were A Way Of Talking To Somebody. I Suppose To Myself.

But Most Commonly, It's One Poem That I Work On With A Lot Of Intensity.

It's Ironic That While I Was A Worker In Detroit, Which I Left When I Was Twenty Six, My Sense Was That The Thing That's Going To Stop Me From Being A Poet Is The Fact That I'm Doing This Crummy Work.

My Mother Carried On And Supported Us; Her Ambition Had Been To Write Poetry And Songs.

I Have A Sense That Many Americans, Especially Those Like Me With European Or Foreign Parents, Feel They Have To Invent Their Families Just As They Have To Invent Themselves.