I'm Seventy-one Now, So It's Hard To

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

Meet Some People Who Care About Poetry The Way You Do. You'll Have That Readership. Keep Going Until You Know You're Doing Work That's Worthy. And Then See What Happens. That's My Advice.

My Father Died When I Was Five, But I Grew Up In A Strong Family.

If That Voice That You Created That Is Most Alive In The Poem Isn't Carried Throughout The Whole Poem, Then I Destroy Where It's Not There, And I Reconstruct It So That That Voice Is The Dominant Voice In The Poem.

Now I Think Poetry Will Save Nothing From Oblivion, But I Keep Writing About The Ordinary Because For Me It's The Home Of The Extraordinary, The Only Home.