The Writing Of A Poem Is Like

Some Of My Educated Filipino Friends Were Aspiring Poets, But Their Aspirations Were All In The Direction Of The United States. They Had No Desire To Learn From The Bardic Tradition That Continued In The Barrios. Their Ideal Would Have Been To Write Something That Would Get Them To Iowa, Where They Would Study Creative Writing.

Saigon Was An Addicted City, And We Were The Drug: The Corruption Of Children, The Mutilation Of Young Men, The Prostitution Of Women, The Humiliation Of The Old, The Division Of The Family, The Division Of The Country-it Had All Been Done In Our Name. . . . The French City . . . Had Represented The Opium Stage Of The Addiction. With The Americans Had Begun The Heroin Phase.

My Sonnet Asserts That The Sonnet Still Lives. My Epic, Should Such Fortune Befall Me, Asserts That The Heroic Narrative Is Not Lost - That It Is Born Again.

Considering The Wealth Of Poetic Drama That Has Come Down To Us From The Elizabethan And Jacobean Periods, It Is Surprising That So Little Of Any Value Has Been Added Since.

Writing For The Page Is Only One Form Of Writing For The Eye. Wherever Solemn Inscriptions Are Put Up In Public Places, There Is A Sense That The Site And The Occasion Demand A Form Of Writing Which Goes Beyond Plain Informative Prose. Each Word Is So Valued That The Letters Forming It Are Seen As Objects Of Solemn Beauty.