Poverty Has Its Advantages. When You're That

The Writers Who Have Been Serious About Recreating American Literature Have Always Been Far And Few Between. What We Do Have At The End Of The 20th Century That We Didn't Have At The Beginning, At That Time Of The Lost Generation Of Rich White Boys, Is A Mixture. We're Now Getting Gay Writers Of Color, Let's Say, And Women Of Color Being Published. This Is Unprecedented.

When I Devoted Myself To Poetry - And Poetry Is A Very Serious Medium - I Don't Think The People That Knew Me As An Individual With That Tongue-in-cheek Kind Of Humor...well, It Didn't Always Lend Itself To My Poetry. When You're Writing Poetry, It's Like Working With Gold, You Can't Waste Anything. You Have To Be Very Economical With Each Word You're Going To Select. But When You're Writing Fiction, You Can Just Go On And On; You Can Be More Playful. My Editor's Main Task Is To Cut Back, Not Ask For More.

I Feel That It's Very Important For Young People To Have A Sense Of History And Do Research And Don't Re-invent The Wheel And Don't Think That You're The First Martyr To Discover Social Injustice But To Take Advantage Of Previous Generations Of Activists And Find Out What They Did And How They Resolved Things.

Our Goal Should Be To Achieve Joy

As Time Has Gone On And We're At The End Of The 20th Century And Major Publishing Is A Big Business, Yes, Of Course We're Going To Get A Lot Of Plain, Mediocre Trash. There Are A Lot Of Writers Who Get Huge Advances For Books That Don't Go Anywhere And They Have To Burn Them Somewhere Or Throw Them Away. I Always Think About All The Poor Trees That Have Been Sacrificed.