Repetition Makes Us Feel Secure And Variation

I Don't Know That I Had A Sense That There Was Such A Thing As "the Poetry World" In The 1960s And Early 70s. Maybe Poets Did, But For Me As An Onlooker And Reader Of Poetry, Poetry Felt Like It Was Part Of A Larger Literary World. I Mean, Even The Phrase "the Poetry World" Reflects A Sort Of Balkanization Of American Literary And Artistic Life That Has To Some Extent Happened Since Then.

Milton Was The First Person Who Really Experimented With Putting Politics Into Sonnets.

I Am Talking About Poetry. It's Like That Line From [john] Yeats: I Go Back To "where All The Ladders Start/ In The Foul Rag And Bone Shop Of The Heart."

Someone In Ireland Asked Me How Many Republican Poets There Were In The U.s., And I Thought Maybe Two. Maybe There Are 10,000 Poets, And Maybe There Are Two Republicans Among Them.

Take The Time To Write. You Can Do Your Life's Work In Half An Hour A Day.