…balancing The Wish To Be Lost With

There's This Pet Phrase About Writing That Is Bandied Around Particularly In Workshops About "finding Your Own Voice As A Poet", Which I Suppose Means That You Come Out From Under The Direct Influence Of Other Poets And Have Perhaps Found A Way To Combine Those Influences So That It Appears To Be Your Own Voice. But I Think You Could Also Put It A Different Way. You, Quote, Find Your Voice, Unquote, When You Are Able To Invent This One Character Who Resembles You, Obviously, And Probably Is More Like You Than Anyone Else On Earth, But Is Not The Equivalent To You.

The Really Authentic Thing About Humor Is That Anyone Can Pretend To Be Serious. Anyone Who's Ever Had A Job - In Fact, We're Pretending To Be Serious Now, More Or Less.

One Of The Ridiculous Aspects Of Being A Poet Is The Huge Gulf Between How Seriously We Take Ourselves And How Generally We Are Ignored By Everybody Else.

The Literary World Is So Full Of Pretension, And There's Such An Enormous Gap Between How Seriously Poets Take Themselves And How Widely They're Ignored By Everybody Else.

I Can't Picture Myself Starting Out Aiming To Do Anything Or Having Much Of An Agenda.i Think In Writing A Poem, I'm Making Some Tonal Adjustments, And It Took Me A Long Time To Allow Anything Like Fun Into My Poetry.