For Any Writer Who Wants To Keep

Over And Over Again I Am Struck By The Wordiness Of Modern Poetry, As If Language Had Replaced Experience And Must Be More And More Extreme, Intricate And In A Way Divorced From Life Itself. It Seems As If What We All Need Is A Great Purification - But How Will That Come About?

The Beginner Hugs His Infant Poem To Him And Does Not Want It To Grow Up. But You May Have To Break Your Poem To Remake It.

Where Joy In An Old Pencil Is Not Absurd.

An Old Body When It Is Loved Becomes A Sacred Treasure; And Sex Itself Must Always, It Seems To Me, Come To Us As A Sacrament And Be So Used Or It Is Meaningless. The Flesh Is Suffused By The Spirit, And It Is Forgetting This In The Act Of Love-making That Creates Cynicism And Despair.

Though Friendship Is Not Quick To Burn It Is Explosive Stuff.