As An Artist, You Have The Job

When I Was In College, I Lost My Scholarship One Year. I Had Enough Money For Tuition, But Not Room And Board. So I Camped In The Hills.

Such Tenderness, Those Afternoons And Evenings, Saying Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry.

The Professionalization Of Poetry, Or The Balkanization, Has Come Out Of The Fact That When You Apply To Most Creative Writing Programs, You Have To Choose Your Genre.

I Teach A Lecture Course On American Poetry To As Many As 150 Students. For A Lot Of Them, Its Their Only Elective, So This Is Their One Shot. Theyll Take The Russian Novel Or American Poetry, So I Want To Give Them The High Points, The Inescapable Poets.

Everybody Has A Different Idea Of When Those Good Old Days Were, But Everyone Is Convinced That There Was A Time When Literature Really Mattered And That It Doesn't Now. They Also Tend To Believe That It Really Matters Someplace Else - In Very Improbable Places Often. Russia Is Someone's Idea Of A Place Where Literature Really Counts.