I'm Seventy-one Now, So It's Hard To

How Weightless/ Words Are When Nothing Will Do.

Back Then, I Couldn't Have Left A Poem A Year And Gone Back To It.

I Believed Even Then That If I Could Transform My Experience Into Poetry I Would Give It The Value And Dignity It Did Not Begin To Possess On Its Own. I Thought Too That If I Could Write About It I Could Come To Understand It; I Believed That If I Could Understand My Life—or At Least The Part My Work Played In It—i Could Embrace It With Some Degree Of Joy, An Element Conspicuously Missing From My Life.

My Mother Carried On And Supported Us; Her Ambition Had Been To Write Poetry And Songs.

For Sure I Once Thought Of Myself As The Poet Who Would Save The Ordinary From Oblivion.