Louise Gluck, C.k. Williams, Thomas Lux. A

I Majored In English In College And That Was My Major In Graduate School Before Switching To Creative Writing. I Read A Lot Of [charles] Dickens And [anthony ] Trollope, But There Was Lots Of Stuff I Hadn't Read Like Thackeray's "vanity Fair," Which Is So Well Written And Funny.

He Thinks Of That Ocean House And Wishes He Were Back In His Former Life Or That One Could Take One Moment And Remain Inside It Like An Egg Inside Its Shell, Instead Of Constantly Being Hurried Into The Future By Good Luck Or Bad.

For The Past Thirty Years Or So, Much American Poetry Has Been Marked By An Earnestness That Rejects The Comic. This Has Nothing To Do With Seriousness. The Comic Can Be Very Serious. The Trouble With The Earnest Is That It Seeks To Be Commended. It Seeks To Be Praised For Its Intention More Than For What It Is Saying.

There Are Many Reasons For Violence. This Is Just Something That Sometimes Happens. We'd See It In Treatment Centers - The Child Who'd Suffered Something Awful. Even In The Best Recovery There'd Be A Fear That Everything Would Fall Apart And They'd Become Victims Again. And Their Final Loyalty Was To Themselves. They Couldn't Be Forced. They Preferred To Wreck Everything, Preferred Self-destruction To Surrender. (175)

Many Of My Poems Try To Use A Comic Element To Reach A Place That Isn't Comic At All. The Comic Element Works As A Surprise. It Is Unexpected And Energizing.