You Will Always Be The Bread And

Robert Frost Really Started This Whole Thing Rolling. He Was, I Believe, The First Poet Who Started Going To Colleges. Before That, Poets Didn't Give Public Readings Very Often, Certainly Not - There Was No Circuit Of Schools.

Usually The Poems Are Written In One Sitting. There's Always A Groping Towards Some Satisfying Ending. But I'd Say The Hardest Part Is Not Writing. Once The Writing Starts, It's Too Pleasurable To Think Of It As A Difficulty.

I'm Very Conscious Of The Fact That Every Line Should Have A Cadence To It. It Should Contribute To The Progress Of The Poem. And That The Ending Of The Line Is A Way Of Turning The Reader's Attention Back Into The Interior Of The Poem.

I Started Moving Away From Poets Like Wallace Stevens And Hart Crane And Started Reading Poets Like, Again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, And The British Poets Who Were Imported Through That Important Anthology Put Together By Alvarez - And Those Would Include Thom Gunn And Ted Hughes. And I Think These Poets Gave Me Assurance That There Were Other Ways To Write Besides The Rather Involuted Style Of High Modernism Whose High Priests Were Pound, Eliot And Stevens, And Crane Perhaps.

So Many Names, There Is Barely Room On The Walls Of The Heart.