You Come By Your Style By Learning

I'm Very Conscious Of The Fact That Every Line Should Have A Cadence To It. It Should Contribute To The Progress Of The Poem. And That The Ending Of The Line Is A Way Of Turning The Reader's Attention Back Into The Interior Of The Poem.

I Started Moving Away From Poets Like Wallace Stevens And Hart Crane And Started Reading Poets Like, Again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, And The British Poets Who Were Imported Through That Important Anthology Put Together By Alvarez - And Those Would Include Thom Gunn And Ted Hughes. And I Think These Poets Gave Me Assurance That There Were Other Ways To Write Besides The Rather Involuted Style Of High Modernism Whose High Priests Were Pound, Eliot And Stevens, And Crane Perhaps.

Vade Mecum I Want The Scissors To Be Sharp And The Table Perfectly Level When You Cut Me Out Of My Life And Paste Me In That Book You Always Carry.

Write The Poem Only You Can Write.

All They Want To Do Is Tie The Poem To A Chair With A Rope And Torture A Confession Out Of It. They Begin Beating It With A Hose To Find Out What It Really Means.