A Poet Is Someone Who

What A View, I Said Again. The River Was Blank And Mindless With Beauty. It Was The Most Glorious Thing I Have Ever Seen. But It Was Not Seeing, Really. For Once It Was Not Just Seeing. It Was Beholding. I Beheld The River In Its Icy Pit Of Brightness, In Its Far-below Sound And Indifference, In Its Large Coil And Tiny Points And Flashes Of The Moon, In Its Long Sinuous Form, In Its Uncomprehending Consequence.

Then You Develop A Kind Of Critical Sense About What You Write. You Can Tell When Something Is Good, But It Would Be Just As Good In Somebody Else's Work Too. You Want To Hold Out For Those Things Only You Can Say.

A Poet Is Someone Who Stands Outside In The Rain Hoping To Be Struck By Lightning.

To Be Precise And Reckless: That Is The Consummation Devoutly To Be Wished.

If It Were Thought That Anything I Wrote Was Influenced By Robert Frost, I Would Take That Particular Piece Of Mine, Shred It, And Flush It Down The Toilet, Hoping Not To Clog The Pipes.