I Once Had The Nerve To Ask

To Be Precise And Reckless: That Is The Consummation Devoutly To Be Wished.

We've Always Had A Tradition In America Of Hounding Our Artists To Death. Look At The List Of Our Great Artists, You See A Continual History Of Defeat, Frustration, Poverty, Alcoholism, Drug Addiction. The Best Poets Of My Generation Are All Suicides.

It Takes An Awful Lot Of Time For Me To Write Anything. I Have Endless Drafts, One After Another; And I Try Out 50, 75, Or A Hundred Variations On A Single Line Sometimes. I Work On The Process Of Refining Low-grade Ore. I Get Maybe A Couple Of Nu Ggets Of Gold Out Of 50 Tons Of Dirt. It Is Tough For Me. No, I Am Not Inspired.

There Are So Many Selves In Everybody, And Just To Explore And Exploit One Is Wrong, Dead Wrong, For The Creative Person.

I Need About One Hundred Fifty Drafts Of A Poem To Get It Right, And Fifty More To Make It Sound Spontaneous.