And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches...
I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky...
I was able to read poets that were – allowed me to be humorous without being silly.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
I was a pretty happy kid, I had to fake it. I had to get into this miserable character before I wrote poems.
There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn’t want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.
I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can’t afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.
I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.
It is as if one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the Southern Hemisphere of the brain.
I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.
This is not what it is like to be you, I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds flew over the rooftop. It is just me thinking about being you. And before I headed back down the hill, I walked in a circle around your house, making an invisible line which you would have to cross before dark.
Form is any aspect of a poem that encourages it to stay whole and not drift off into chaos.
And strangely enoughthe only emotion I ever feel, is what the beaver must feel, as he bears each stick to his hidden construction, which creates the tranquil pond and gives the mallards somewhere to paddle, and the pair of swans a place to conceal their young.
I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.
The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.
But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain.
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.
No one here likes a wet dog.
Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it’s always your turn – I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it’s under way, there is a sense of flow.