Tonight I Feel The Stars Are Out

There's A Sameness About American Poetry That I Don't Think Represents The Whole People. It Represents A Poetry Of The Moment, A Poetry Of Evasion, And I Have Problems With This. I Believe Poetry Has Always Been Political, Long Before Poets Had To Deal With The Page And White Space . . . It's Natural.

I Originally Wanted To Embrace The Imagery And Forthrightness Of Rap Music. There Are Some Interesting, Dynamic Voices In Rap. But I Find Most Of It Irresponsible In Its Overt Violence And Commercialization Of Anger. As Artists, We Believe We Can Will Action Through Language. If That's The Case, We Have To Take Responsibility For What We Say.

We Have To Embrace The Good Over The Bad. That Has To Be One's Personal Project.

Students Often Have Such A Lofty Idea Of What A Poem Is, And I Want Them To Realize That Their Own Lives Are Where The Poetry Comes From. The Most Important Things Are To Respect The Language; To Know The Classical Rules, Even If Only To Break Them; And To Be Prepared To Edit, To Revise, To Shape.

I Like Connecting The Abstract To The Concrete. There's A Tension In That. I Believe The Reader Or Listener Should Be Able To Enter The Poem As A Participant. So I Try To Get Past Resolving Poems.