It Took Me 14 Years To Write

Students Often Have Such A Lofty Idea Of What A Poem Is, And I Want Them To Realize That Their Own Lives Are Where The Poetry Comes From. The Most Important Things Are To Respect The Language; To Know The Classical Rules, Even If Only To Break Them; And To Be Prepared To Edit, To Revise, To Shape.

It Took Me 14 Years To Write Poems About Vietnam. I Had Never Thought About Writing About It, And In A Way I Had Been Systematically Writing Around It.

I Define Poetry As Celebration And Confrontation. When We Witness Something, Are We Responsible For What We Witness? That's An On-going Existential Question. Perhaps We Are And Perhaps There's A Kind Of Daring, A Kind Of Necessary Energetic Questioning. Because Often I Say It's Not What We Know, It's What We Can Risk Discovering.

I Said That Love Heals From Inside.

I Knew Life Began Where I Stood In The Dark, Looking Out Into The Light.