My Father Died When I Was Five,

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.

You Have To Follow Where The Poem Leads. And It Will Surprise You. It Will Say Things You Didn't Expect To Say. And You Look At The Poem And You Realize, 'that Is Truly What I Felt.' That Is Truly What I Saw.

I Write What's Given Me To Write.

I Believed Even Then That If I Could Transform My Experience Into Poetry I Would Give It The Value And Dignity It Did Not Begin To Possess On Its Own. I Thought Too That If I Could Write About It I Could Come To Understand It; I Believed That If I Could Understand My Life—or At Least The Part My Work Played In It—i Could Embrace It With Some Degree Of Joy, An Element Conspicuously Missing From My Life.

I Started Listening To Music When I Wrote When I Had Three Sons At Home.