So Many Names, There Is Barely Room

I Think What Gets A Poem Going Is An Initiating Line. Sometimes A First Line Will Occur, And It Goes Nowhere; But Other Times - And This, I Think, Is A Sense You Develop - I Can Tell That The Line Wants To Continue. If It Does, I Can Feel A Sense Of Momentum - The Poem Finds A Reason For Continuing.

Nationalism Is A Type Of Insanity In Which The Boundaries Of A Land Replace God.

I Think My Work Has To Do With A Sense That We Are Attempting, All The Time, To Create A Logical, Rational Path Through The Day. To The Left And Right There Are An Amazing Set Of Distractions That We Usually Can't Afford To Follow. But The Poet Is Willing To Stop Anywhere.

When I'm Constructing A Poem, I'm Trying To Write One Good Line After Another. One Solid Line After Another. You Know A Lot Of The Lines - Some Hold Up Better As Lines Than Others. But I'm Not Thinking Of Just Writing A Paragraph And Then Chopping It Up.

I Was A Pretty Happy Kid, I Had To Fake It. I Had To Get Into This Miserable Character Before I Wrote Poems.