I Am Often Asked Why I Write,

My Feeling Is That Most Political Poetry Is Preaching To The Choir, And That The People Who Are Going To Make The Political Changes In Our Lives Are Not The People Who Read Poetry, Unfortunately. Poetry Not Specifically Aimed At Political Revolution, Though, Is Beneficial In Moving People Toward That Kind Of Action, As Well As Other Kinds Of Action. A Good Poem Makes Me Want To Be Active On As Many Fronts As Possible.

Alone With Our Madness And Favorite Flower We See That There Really Is Nothing Left To Write About. Or Rather, It Is Necessary To Write About The Same Old Things In The Same Way, Repeating The Same Things Over And Over For Love To Continue And Be Gradually Different.

The Term Ignorant Is Indeed Perhaps An Overstatement, Implying As It Does That Something Is Known Somewhere, Whereas In Reality We Are Not Even Sure Of This: We In Fact Cannot Aver With Any Degree Of Certainty That We Are Ignorant. Yet This Is Not So Bad; We Have At Any Rate Kept Our Open-mindedness -- That, At Least, We May Be Sure That We Have -- And Are Not In Any Danger, Or So It Seems, Of Freezing Into The Pious Attitudes Of Those True Spiritual Bigots Whose Faces Are Turned Toward Eternity And Who Therefore Can See Nothing.

The Facts Of History Have Been Too Well Rehearsed.

We Might Realize That The Present Moment May Be One Of An Eternal Or Sempiternal Series Of Moments, All Of Which Will Resemble It Because, In Some Ways, They Are The Present, And Won't In Other Ways, Because The Present Will Be The Past By That Time.