If You Dissect A Bird / To

I Think The Whole Emphasis In England, In Universities, On Practical Criticism (but Not That So Much As On Historical Criticism, Knowing What Period A Line Comes From) This Is Almost Paralysing. In America, In University, We Read - What? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, That Is Where We Began. Shakespeare Flaunted In The Background. I'm Not Sure I Agree With This, But I Think That' For The Young Poet, The Writing Poet, It Is Not Quite So Frightening To Go To University In America As It Is In England, For These Reasons.

We Stayed At Home To Write, To Consolidate Our Outstretched Selves.

On The Train: Staring Hypnotized At The Blackness Outside The Window, Feeling The Incomparable Rhythmic Language Of The Wheels, Clacking Out Nursery Rhymes, Summing Up Moments Of The Mind Like The Chant Of A Broken Record: God Is Dead, God Is Dead. Going, Going, Going. And The Pure Bliss Of This, The Erotic Rocking Of The Coach. France Splits Open Like A Ripe Fig In The Mind; We Are Raping The Land, We Are Not Stopping.

The Claw Of The Magnolia, Drunk On Its Own Scents, Asks Nothing Of Life.

I Had Decided I Would Put Off The Novel Until I Had Gone To Europe And Had A Lover.