I Was A Fantastic Student Until Ten,

I Was Fortunate That By The Time I Was Born, There Were A Lot Of Comforts And At The Same Time I Lived In A Neighborhood Where It Was Brought To My Eyes Every Single Day That People Didn't Live Like Me. Every Day I Knew That Many Of My Friends "got Relief." That Was Important In My Thinking About The World, Thinking That Not Everybody Lived That Way.

It's A Terrible Thing To Die Young. Still, It Saves A Lot Of Time.

My Mother Went To Demonstrations. I Remember Her Going To A Big Demonstration For Earl Brower And She Came Home Crying And Said The Communists Were Very Mean And Booed Their People. I Remember Feeling Sad At Her Feeling Sad.

When You Think Of Things That Influenced Your Life, Mother Goose Influenced More People Than Almost Any Other Thing, The Rhythms Of Those Poems. Everything After That Was A Bare Imitation Of Some Of Those Mysterious And Materialistic Poems.

I Might Write Four Lines Or I Might Write Twenty. I Subtract And I Add Until I Really Hit Something I Want To Do. You Don't Always Whittle Down, Sometimes You Whittle Up.