And The Words We Find Are Always

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

I Wrote Poetry For Seven Or Eight Years, Maybe Longer, Before I Could Say I Was A Poet. If People Asked, I'd Say I Wrote Poetry; I Wouldn't Go Further. I Was In My Mid- To Late-thirties Before I Felt That I Was A Poet, Which I Think Meant That I Had Begun To Embody My Poems In Some Way. I Wasn't Just A Writer Of Them. Hard To Say What, As A Poet, My Place In The World Is. Some Place Probably Between Recognition And Neglect.

Perhaps Basketball And Poetry Have Just A Few Things In Common, But The Most Important Is The Possibility Of Transcendence. The Opposite Is Labor. In Writing, Every Writer Knows When He Or She Is Laboring To Achieve An Effect. You Want To Get From Here To There, But Find Yourself Willing It, Forcing It. The Equivalent In Basketball Is Aiming Your Shot, A Kind Of Strained And Usually Ineffective Purposefulness. What You Want Is To Be In Some Kind Of Flow, Each Next Moment A Discovery.

Now And Again I Feel The Astonishment Of Being Alive Like This, In This Body.

All Good Poems Are Victories Over Something.