A Motto I've Adopted Is, If At

And The Reason I Am Writing This On The Back Of A Manila Envelope Now That They Have Left The Train Together Is To Tell You That When She Turned To Lift The Large, Delicate Cello Onto The Overhead Rack, I Saw Him Looking Up At Her And What She Was Doing The Way The Eyes Of Saints Are Painted When They Are Looking Up At God When He Is Doing Something Remarkable, Something That Identifies Him As God.

Another Trouble With Poetry - And I'm Gonna Stop The List At Two - Is The Presence Of Presumptuousness In Poetry, The Sense You Get In A Poem That The Poet Takes For Granted An Interest On The Reader's Part In The Poet's Autobiographical Life, In The Poet's Memories, Problems, Difficulties And Even Minor Perceptions.

I Think What Gets A Poem Going Is An Initiating Line. Sometimes A First Line Will Occur, And It Goes Nowhere; But Other Times - And This, I Think, Is A Sense You Develop - I Can Tell That The Line Wants To Continue. If It Does, I Can Feel A Sense Of Momentum - The Poem Finds A Reason For Continuing.

I Just Think That The World Of Workshops - I've Written A Poem That Is A Parody Of Workshop Talk, I've Written A Poem That Is A Kind Of Parody Of A Garrulous Poet At A Poetry Reading Who Spends An Inordinate Amount Of Time Explaining The Poem Before Reading It, I've Written A Number Of Satirical Poems About Other Poets.

It's Time To Float On The Waters Of The Night. Time To Wrap My Arms Around This Book And Press It To My Chest, Life Preserver In A Seat Of Unremarkable Men And Women Anonymous Faces On The Street, A Hundred Thousand Unalphabitized Things A Million Forgotten Hours.