Writing Is Rewriting What You Have Rewritten.

Writing Is Like This -- You Dredge For The Poem's Meaning The Way Police Dredge For A Body. They Think It Is Down There Under The Black Water, They Work The Grappling Hooks Back And Forth.

I Can Still Remember The Feel In My Hand Of That Most Wonderful American Coin Ever Minted, A Nickel With A Buffalo On One Side And The Head Of An Indian On The Other. That Nickel Was A Daily Proof Of Our Country's Past. Bring It Back!

Touch Was Important. The Evening Of The Third Of July We Would Go Around The Neighborhood And Look At The Fireworks Others Had Bought, Taking Them Out Of The Brown Paper Sack And Handling Them Cautiously As If They Were Precious Stones. There Was Envy When We Saw Sacks With More In Them Than We Had.

Has The Painter Not Always Gone To An Art School, Or At Least To An Established Master, For Instruction? And The Composer, The Sculptor, The Architect? Then Why Not The Writer? Good Poets, Like Good Hybrid Corn, Are Both Born And Made.

For My Oxford Degree, I Had To Translate French And German Philosophy (as It Turned Out, Descartes And Kant) At Sight Without A Dictionary. That Meant Germany For My First Summer Vacation, To Learn The Thorny Language On My Own.