Originality, Of Course, Is What

If The Motive Of Writing Is For Some People A Kind Of Exercise In Dirty Laundry, That's One Thing. I've Always Thought Of My Poems As Meant To Be Overheard, As I Think All Of These Poems Are. It Seems To Me If You Get Experience Right, Even Your Most Painful Or Humiliating Experiences - If You Get Those Experiences Right For Yourself And Make Discoveries As You Go Along And Find For Them Some Formal Glue - They Will Be Poems For Others.

Bring To Me, It Said, Continual Proof / You've Been Alive.

And The Words We Find Are Always Insufficient, Like Love, Though They Are Often Lovely And All We Have.

The World Is Always Somewhat Vicious. I Take That As A Given, But At Various Times In Various Circumstances That Fact Will Be No More Than A Shadow Or An Echo Behind Some Poem. Other Times It Will Be More Manifest. I Try To Write Myself Into Articulations Of Half-felt, Half-known Feelings, Without Program. I'm Always Working Toward Getting My World And, Hopefully, The World Outside Of Me Into A Version That Makes Sense Of It. Viciousness Requires The Same Precision As Love Does.

A True Inner World Is Often Revealed By Style And Sensibility As Much As By What Appears To Be Confession.