Isn't There A Curious Elegance In How

Originality, Of Course, Is What Occurs When Something New Arises Out Of What's Already Been Done.

Perhaps Basketball And Poetry Have Just A Few Things In Common, But The Most Important Is The Possibility Of Transcendence. The Opposite Is Labor. In Writing, Every Writer Knows When He Or She Is Laboring To Achieve An Effect. You Want To Get From Here To There, But Find Yourself Willing It, Forcing It. The Equivalent In Basketball Is Aiming Your Shot, A Kind Of Strained And Usually Ineffective Purposefulness. What You Want Is To Be In Some Kind Of Flow, Each Next Moment A Discovery.

I Don't Let A Poem Go Into The World Unless I Feel That I've Transformed The Experience In Some Way. Even Poems I've Written In The Past That Appear Very Personal Often Are Fictions Of The Personal, Which Nevertheless Reveal Concerns Of Mine. I've Always Thought Of My First-person Speaker As An Amalgam Of Selves, Maybe Of Other People's Experiences As Well.

I Wrote Poetry For Seven Or Eight Years, Maybe Longer, Before I Could Say I Was A Poet. If People Asked, I'd Say I Wrote Poetry; I Wouldn't Go Further. I Was In My Mid- To Late-thirties Before I Felt That I Was A Poet, Which I Think Meant That I Had Begun To Embody My Poems In Some Way. I Wasn't Just A Writer Of Them. Hard To Say What, As A Poet, My Place In The World Is. Some Place Probably Between Recognition And Neglect.

I Will Try To Disappoint You Better Than Anyone Ever Has.