At Some Level, You Have To Be

When I Began Writing Poems, It Was In The Late 60s And Early 70s When The Literary And Cultural Atmosphere Was Very Much Affected By What Was Going On In The World, Which Was, In Succession, The Civil Rights Movement, The Antiwar Movement, And The Women's Movement In The 60s, 70s, And Into The Early 80s. And All Of Those Things Affected Me And Affected My Thinking, Particularly The Vietnam War.

Images Are Not Quite Ideas, They Are Stiller Than That, With Less Implication Outside Themselves. And They Are Not Myth, They Do Not Have The Explanatory Power; They Are Nearer To Pure Story. Nor Are They Always Metaphors; They Do Not Say This Is That, They Say This Is.

There's Very Little Solid Research On Readership, Yet People Make Pronouncements About It All The Time.

I Am Talking About Poetry. It's Like That Line From [john] Yeats: I Go Back To "where All The Ladders Start/ In The Foul Rag And Bone Shop Of The Heart."

As An Artist, You Have The Job Of Working Out Whatever Is Given You To Work Out.