When I Stop Becoming, That's When I

Better To Be Furious At One Thing, Become Radiant With Purpose. Better To Love Links And Rhythms Than All-embracing Answers.

I Wrote Poetry For Seven Or Eight Years, Maybe Longer, Before I Could Say I Was A Poet. If People Asked, I'd Say I Wrote Poetry; I Wouldn't Go Further. I Was In My Mid- To Late-thirties Before I Felt That I Was A Poet, Which I Think Meant That I Had Begun To Embody My Poems In Some Way. I Wasn't Just A Writer Of Them. Hard To Say What, As A Poet, My Place In The World Is. Some Place Probably Between Recognition And Neglect.

There Are Always The Simple Events Of Your Life That You Might Try To Convert Into Legend.

Poetry Does So Many Different Things, It's Difficult To Say Anything Definitive About Its Role, Which Of Course Varies From Culture To Culture. It Can Range From Being Stories Of The Tribe To The Private Lyric, To Being As W.h. Auden Said "the Clear Expression Of Mixed Feelings" To Nonsense Verse.

A Good Many Of My Poems Over The Years Have Alluded To Or Taken On The Political. Stevens Has A Line In One Of His Essays: "reality Exerts Pressure On The Imagination." Inevitably What Is Omnipresent In The Culture Exerts Its Pressure On Our Imaginations To Respond To It, Even If Indirectly. But In This Case The Backdrop Of 9/11, Coincident With The Breakup Of A Marriage, The Finding Of New Love, Some Kind Of Personal Cataclysm... All Of Those Were Forces Informing The Poems In Some Way.