My Father Died When I Was Five,

I Believed Even Then That If I Could Transform My Experience Into Poetry I Would Give It The Value And Dignity It Did Not Begin To Possess On Its Own. I Thought Too That If I Could Write About It I Could Come To Understand It; I Believed That If I Could Understand My Life—or At Least The Part My Work Played In It—i Could Embrace It With Some Degree Of Joy, An Element Conspicuously Missing From My Life.

There'll Always Be Working People In My Poems Because I Grew Up With Them, And I Am A Poet Of Memory.

I Realized Poetry's The Thing That I Can Do 'cause I Can Stick At It And Work With Tremendous Intensity.

My Temperament Is Not Geared To That Of A Novelist.

I'm Afraid We Live At The Mercy Of A Power, Maybe A God, Without Mercy. And Yet We Find It, As I Have, From Others.