I'm Trying To Write Poems That Involve

The Really Authentic Thing About Humor Is That Anyone Can Pretend To Be Serious. Anyone Who's Ever Had A Job - In Fact, We're Pretending To Be Serious Now, More Or Less.

A Trouble With Poetry Is The Presence Of Presumptuousness In Poetry, The Sense You Get In A Poem That The Poet Takes For Granted An Interest On The Reader's Part In The Poet's Autobiographical Life, In The Poet's Memories, Problems, Difficulties And Even Minor Perceptions. I Try To Presume That No One Is Interested In Me. And I Think Experience Bears That Out. No One's Interested In The Experiences Of A Stranger - Let's Put It That Way. And Then You Have Difficulty Combined With Presumptuousness, Which Is The Most Dire Trouble With Poetry.

The Poem Is Not, As Someone Put It, Deflective Of Entry. But The Real Question Is, 'what Happens To The Reader Once He Or She Gets Inside The Poem?' That's The Real Question For Me, Is Getting The Reader Into The Poem And Then Taking The Reader Somewhere, Because I Think Of Poetry As A Kind Of Form Of Travel Writing.

More Often Than Not In Poetry I Find Difficulty To Be Gratuitous And Show-offy And Camouflaging, Experimental To A Kind Of Insane Degree - A Difficulty Which Really Ignores The Possibility Of Having A Sensible Reader.

It's A Good Thing To Get Poetry Off The Shelves And More Into Public Life.