Through The Years I Have

Vietnam Helped Me To Look At The Horror And Terror In The Hearts Of People And Realize How We Can't Aim Guns And Set Booby Traps For People We Have Never Spoken A Word To. That Kind Of Impersonal Violence Mystifies Me.

Through The Years I Have Seen Myself As A Peaceful Person, But The Awareness Of The Anger Is Part Of That Process.

I Like Connecting The Abstract To The Concrete. There's A Tension In That. I Believe The Reader Or Listener Should Be Able To Enter The Poem As A Participant. So I Try To Get Past Resolving Poems.

I Am This Space My Body Believes In.

Students Often Have Such A Lofty Idea Of What A Poem Is, And I Want Them To Realize That Their Own Lives Are Where The Poetry Comes From. The Most Important Things Are To Respect The Language; To Know The Classical Rules, Even If Only To Break Them; And To Be Prepared To Edit, To Revise, To Shape.