How Weightless/ Words Are When Nothing Will

I Have A Sense That Many Americans, Especially Those Like Me With European Or Foreign Parents, Feel They Have To Invent Their Families Just As They Have To Invent Themselves.

You Have To Follow Where The Poem Leads. And It Will Surprise You. It Will Say Things You Didn't Expect To Say. And You Look At The Poem And You Realize, 'that Is Truly What I Felt.' That Is Truly What I Saw.

I Say, Father, The Years Have Brought Me Here, Still Your Son, They Have Brought Me To A Life I Cannot Understand.

My Sense Of A Poem - My Notion Of How You Revise - Is: You Get Yourself Into A State Where What You Are Intensely Conscious Of Is Not Why You Wrote It Or How You Wrote It, But What You Wrote.

I Was Very Lucky To Have A Mother Who Encouraged Me To Become A Poet.