Philip Larkin Has A Tough Honesty And

Teaching Writing Over The Years Intrudes On Your Own Writing In Important Ways, Taking Away Some Of The Excitement Of Poetry.

I Write As A Way Of Keeping Myself Going. You Build Your Life Around Writing, And It's What Gets You Through. So It's Partly Just Curiosity To See What You Can Do.

Pound's Translation Of Chinese Poetry Was Maybe The Most Important Thing I Read. Eliot A Little Bit Later.

The Best Books Of Our Times Have Included The Three Mature Volumes Of Philip Larkin. They're Very Short Books Of Poems, And Very Carefully Arranged.

Alchemy Is The Art Of Far And Near, And I Think Poetry Is Alchemy In That Way. It's Delightful To Distort Size, To See Something That's Tiny As Though It Were Vast.