One Of The Great Functions Of Art

Art, Whose Honesty Must Work Through Artifice, Cannot Avoid Cheating Truth.

You Must Write, And Read, As If Your Life Depended On It.

We Assume That Politicians Are Without Honor. We Read Their Statements Trying To Crack The Code. The Scandals Of Their Politics: Not So Much That Men In High Places Lie, Only That They Do So With Such Indifference, So Endlessly, Still Expecting To Be Believed. We Are Accustomed To The Contempt Inherent In The Political Lie.

What I Search For Continuously In My Art Is Adequate Language, Language I Hope Can Stand Beyond Any Particular Occasion. What I'm Finding Is That In Our Increasingly Dysfunctional U.s. Society, Marvelous Poetry Is Being Written - Out Of And Amid The Dysfunction.

I Believe That Words Can Help Us Move Or Keep Us Paralyzed, And That Our Choices Of Language And Verbal Tone Have Something - A Great Deal - To Do With How We Live Our Lives.