I Remember Mother Saying : Inventors Are

The Sources Of Poetry Are In The Spirit Seeking Completeness.

The 'idea' For The Poem, Which May Come As An Image Thrown Against Memory, As A Sound Of Words That Sets Off A Traveling Of Sound And Meaning, As A Curve Of Emotion (a Form) Plotted By Certain Crises Of Events Or Image Or Sound, Or As A Title Which Evokes A Sense Of Inner Relations; This Is The First 'surfacing' Of The Poem. Then A Period Of Stillness May Follow.

How Can I Look Back And Not Speak Of The Stupid Learning About Birth? Of The Stupid Learning That People Make Love, And How It Seemed The Reason For All Things, The Intimacy Of My Wondering, The Illumination That To An Adolescent Was The Cause For Life Around Me, The Reason Why The Unhappy People I Knew Did Not Kill Themselves?

Everywhere We Are Told That Our Human Resources Are All To Be Used, That Our Civilization Itself Means The Uses Of Everything It Has - The Inventions, The Histories, Every Scrap Of Fact. But There Is One Kind Of Knowledge - Infinitely Precious, Time-resistant More Than Monuments, Here To Be Passed Between The Generations In Any Way It May Be: Never To Be Used. And That Is Poetry.

One Writes In Order To Feel.