I'm Reading A Manuscript By

Many Of My Poems Try To Use A Comic Element To Reach A Place That Isn't Comic At All. The Comic Element Works As A Surprise. It Is Unexpected And Energizing.

Baudelaire's L'héautontimorouménos Was Long Seen To Be A Sexual Sadomasochistic Poem, It Is Now Generally Accepted That The Poem Is About Writing Poetry.

I Remember Coming Upon Philip Larkin In My 20s In The Early '60s And When Sylvia Plath's "ariel" Came Out It Knocked Me Off My Feet.

I Can't Believe There Is A Poet Who Hasn't Eagerly Put Down A Word One Day, Only To Erase It The Next Day Deciding It Was Sheer Lunacy. It's Part Of The Process Of Selection.

Let's Say Someone Has Experienced A Violent Trauma Or Betrayal: A Child Has Been Raped By A Parent Or Has Witnessed The Destruction Of Someone He Loves Or Has Been So Traumatized By The Possibility Of Beatings And Punishments That He's Afraid To Act. If The Trauma Is Great Enough, That Person's Life May Become Frozen, Emotionally Frozen Even Though He Still Gets Up In The Morning, Is Busy All Day, And Goes To Bed At Night. But There's This Empty Space That Begins To Fill With Rage, Rage Toward Everyone - The Perpetrator, The People In The World Who Haven't Suffered, Even Toward Himself. (174)