As A Teacher You Are

There Is Something Very Satisfactory About Being In The Middle Of Something.

I've Been An Inveterate Reader Of Literary Magazines Since I Was A Teenager. There Are Always Discoveries. You're Sitting In Your Easy Chair, Reading; You Realize You've Read A Story Or A Group Of Poems Four Times, And You Know, Yes, I Want To Go Farther With This Writer.

We Sometimes Received - And I Would Read - 200 Manuscripts A Week. Some Of Them Were Wonderful, Some Were Terrible; Most Were Mediocre. It Was Like The Gifts Of The Good And Bad Fairies.

Of The Individual Poems, Some Are More Lyric And Some Are More Descriptive Or Narrative. Each Poem Is Fixed In A Moment. All Those Moments Written Or Read Together Take On The Movement And Architecture Of A Narrative.

With, Or Despite Our Scars, We Stay Alive.