I Think Men Have Always Been Afraid

I Myself Hate That Old Hemingwayesque Paradigm Of The Writer As Prizefighter And I Have Tried Hard To Create An Alternate One For Myself. When Anne Sexton Admonished Me, "we Are All Writing God's Poem," I Took It To Mean There Should Be No Competition Between Writers Because We Are All Involved In A Common Project, A Common Prayer. But To Gore's And Norman's Generation, Particularly Those Male Writers Who Served In The Second World War, The Prizefighter Paradigm Remains.

Poetry Is The Language We Speak In The Most Terrifying Or Ecstatic Passages Of Our Lives. But The Very Word Poetry Scares People. They Think Of Their Grade School Teachers Reciting 'hiawatha' And They Groan.

A Concern With 'public Morality' Is - If Not The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel - The First Foray Of The Fascist.

Motherhood Cannot Finally Be Delegated. Breast-feeding May Succumb To The Bottle; Cuddling, Fondling, And Paediatric Visits May Also Be Done By Fathers...but When A Child Needs A Mother To Talk To, Nobody Else But A Mother Will Do.

The Worst Thing About Jealousy Is How Low It Makes You Reach.