And I Should Mention The

A Motto I've Adopted Is, If At First You Don't Succeed, Hide All Evidence That You Ever Tried.

I Think The Pleasure Of Form Is That You Have A Companion With You Besides All The Poetry You Have Ever Read.

I Was Influenced By The Beats Because I Actually Just Began To Commit Adolescence Around 1955, When "howl" And Rebel Without A Cause And A Lot Of Other New Things Were Popping Up. (again I'm Trying To Give You A Finite Version Of This Career.) And Then I Came Under The Sway Of Wallace Stevens When I Was In College And Graduate School, And Basically Set As A Life Goal The Ambition Of Writing Third-rate Wallace Stevens. I Thought I Would Be Completely Content If I Was Recognized At Some Later Point In My Life As A Third-rate Wallace Stevens.

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.

Humor, For Me, Is Really A Gate Of Departure. Its A Way Of Enticing A Reader Into A Poem So That Less Funny Things Can Take Place Later. It Really Is Not An End In Itself, But A Means To An End.