I Was Very Lucky To

I Have A Sense That Many Americans, Especially Those Like Me With European Or Foreign Parents, Feel They Have To Invent Their Families Just As They Have To Invent Themselves.

For Sure I Once Thought Of Myself As The Poet Who Would Save The Ordinary From Oblivion.

I Realized Poetry's The Thing That I Can Do 'cause I Can Stick At It And Work With Tremendous Intensity.

My Temperament Is Not Geared To That Of A Novelist.

My Sense Of A Poem - My Notion Of How You Revise - Is: You Get Yourself Into A State Where What You Are Intensely Conscious Of Is Not Why You Wrote It Or How You Wrote It, But What You Wrote.