So Many Names, There Is Barely Room

I Think What Gets A Poem Going Is An Initiating Line. Sometimes A First Line Will Occur, And It Goes Nowhere; But Other Times - And This, I Think, Is A Sense You Develop - I Can Tell That The Line Wants To Continue. If It Does, I Can Feel A Sense Of Momentum - The Poem Finds A Reason For Continuing.

I'm Speaking To Someone I'm Trying To Get To Fall In Love With Me. I'm Trying To Speak Intimately To One Person. That Should Be Clear. I'm Not Speaking To An Audience. I'm Not Writing For The Podium. I'm Just Writing, Trying To Write In A Fairly Quiet Tone To One Other Reader Who Is By Herself, Or Himself, And I'm Trying To Interrupt Some Silence In Their Life, Which Is Utterance.

I Thought Originally When I Was In School And I Wanted To Be A Poet, I Knew That Poets Seemed To Be Miserable.

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.

I Was Able To Read Poets That Were - Allowed Me To Be Humorous Without Being Silly.