So Hope For A Great Sea-change On

Harvard Created Wonderful Conditions For Me As A Writerbut The Writing Was Done, Almost Entirely, When I Got Home.

Poetry Cannot Afford To Lose Its Fundamentally Self-delighting Inventiveness, Its Joy In Being A Process Of Language As Well As A Representation Of Things In The World.

My Body Was Braille For The Creeping Influences.

A Public Expectation, It Has To Be Said, Not Of Poetry As Such But Of Political Positions Variously Approvable By Mutually Disapproving Groups.

The Poems I Did Write There [in Harvard] Include Alphabets The 1984 Phi Beta Kappa Poem And A Sofa In The Forties. And, Of Course, The John Harvard Poem For The 350th Anniversary Villanelle For An Anniversary.