The Real Writer Is One Who Really

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.

I Don't Think Writers Change The Past Any More Than Other People Do, Except In So Far As We May Mine Our Lives And Change Things For Fictional Use.

My Strength And My Weakness Are Twins In The Same Womb.

We Can Only Know What We Can Truly Imagine. Finally What We See Comes From Ourselves.

One Of The Best Gifts You Can Give A Poet Is To Present Them With Field Guides - To Rocks, To Stars, To Birds, To Wildflowers, To Trees And Bushes, To Butterflies, To Reptiles And Amphibians. Because When You Look At Anything Long Enough To Be Able To Identify It, You See Far More Clearly And You Make A Tiny Beginning At Understanding The Life, The Place, The History Of That Bird Or Rock Or Mammal.