Deep Feeling Doesn't Make For Good Poetry.

My Thoughts Are Crowded With Death And It Draws So Oddly On The Sexual That I Am Confused To Be Attracted By, In Effect, My Own Annihilation.

I Had Assumed That I Would Age With All My Friends Growing Old Around Me, Dying Off Very Gradually One By One. And Here Was A Plague That Cut Them Off So Early.

I'm Not Sure I Had Ever Written A Fan Letter Before To A Poet I Had Not Met, But That's What I Did When I Read Two Poems By Gregory Woods ... I Admired Them Especially For Their Technical Virtuosity, In That It Was Technique Completely Used, Never For The Sake Of Cleverness But As A Component Of Feeling ... What An Enviable Talent Gregory Woods Has

Thus For Each Blunt-faced Ignorant One The Great Grey Rigid Uniform Combined Safety With Virtue Of The Sun. Thus Concepts Linked Like Chainmail In The Mind.

When I First Started Teaching At Berkeley In 1958, I Could Not Announce That I Was Gay To Anybody, Though Probably Quite A Few Of My Fellow Teachers Knew.