The Past Is What Makes Now Like

A Poet Is Wounded Into Speech, And He Examines These Wounds, Meticulously, To Discover How To Heal Them. The Bad Poet Harangues At The Pain And Yowls At The Weapons That Lacerate Him; The Great Poet Explores The Inflamed Lips Of Ruined Flesh With Ice-caked Fingers, Glittering And Precise; But Ultimately His Poem Is The Echoing, Dual Voice Reporting The Damages.

What You Are Will Make You What You Will Become.

From 1968 On, I Was Pretty Much The Black, Gay Sf Writer.

As A Prose Writer, I Work With Language; And Those Who Work With Language Turn To Poetry For Renewal.

The Artist Has Some Internal Experience That Produces A Poem, A Painting, A Piece Of Music. Spectators Submit Themselves To The Work, Which Generates An Inner Experience For Them. But Historically It's A Very New, Not To Mention Vulgar, Idea That The Spectator's Experience Should Be Identical To, Or Even Have Anything To Do With, The Artist's. That Idea Comes From An Over-industrialized Society Which Has Learned To Distrust Magic.