I Think Of Language As Our First

There's A Sameness About American Poetry That I Don't Think Represents The Whole People. It Represents A Poetry Of The Moment, A Poetry Of Evasion, And I Have Problems With This. I Believe Poetry Has Always Been Political, Long Before Poets Had To Deal With The Page And White Space . . . It's Natural.

Poetry Is A Kind Of Distilled Insinuation. It's A Way Of Expanding And Talking Around An Idea Or A Question. Sometimes, More Actually Gets Said Through Such A Technique Than A Full Frontal Assault.

I Define Poetry As Celebration And Confrontation. When We Witness Something, Are We Responsible For What We Witness? That's An On-going Existential Question. Perhaps We Are And Perhaps There's A Kind Of Daring, A Kind Of Necessary Energetic Questioning. Because Often I Say It's Not What We Know, It's What We Can Risk Discovering.

I'm Uncomfortable With The Focus On The Poet And Not On The Poem.

Vietnam Helped Me To Look At The Horror And Terror In The Hearts Of People And Realize How We Can't Aim Guns And Set Booby Traps For People We Have Never Spoken A Word To. That Kind Of Impersonal Violence Mystifies Me.