Writing Is An Incessant Process Of Discovery.

When I Began Writing Poems, It Was In The Late 60s And Early 70s When The Literary And Cultural Atmosphere Was Very Much Affected By What Was Going On In The World, Which Was, In Succession, The Civil Rights Movement, The Antiwar Movement, And The Women's Movement In The 60s, 70s, And Into The Early 80s. And All Of Those Things Affected Me And Affected My Thinking, Particularly The Vietnam War.

All The New Thinking Is About Loss. In This It Resembles All The Old Thinking

They Are The Kinds Of Things That Make Us A Community: Attachment To Place, Attachment To Local Arts Traditions, The Ability To Read Literature, The Ability To Look At Paintings, The Sense Of Connectedness To The Land, The Sense Of Community That Comes From People Taking Care Of Their Own.

There's A Good Deal In Pound's And Eliot's Poetry That Stood Up Even Though Their Politics Were Deplorable. Or Pound's Very Deplorable, Eliot's Kind Of Deplorable.

Someone In Ireland Asked Me How Many Republican Poets There Were In The U.s., And I Thought Maybe Two. Maybe There Are 10,000 Poets, And Maybe There Are Two Republicans Among Them.