The Mind Can Be Trained To Relieve

Poetry Is Like Standing On The Edge Of A Lake On A Moonlit Night And The Light Of The Moon Is Always Pointing Straight At You.

You Come By Your Style By Learning What To Leave Out. At First You Tend To Overwrite—embellishment Instead Of Insight. You Either Continue To Write Puerile Bilge, Or You Change. In The Process Of Simplifying Oneself, One Often Discovers The Thing Called Voice.

I Write With A Uni-ball Onyx Micropoint On Nine-by-seven Bound Notebooks Made By A Canadian Company Called Blueline. After I Do A Few Drafts, I Type Up The Poem On A Macintosh G3 And Then Send It Out The Door.

You Know How Sometimes You Just Have A Memory Of Looking Up And Seeing A Face Looking Over Your Crib And Then Remember Nothing Until Tenth Grade? - I Have One Of These Early Memories Where I'm In The Back Of My Parents' Car, A Place I Loved To Spend A Lot Of Time As An Only Child, Not Having To Fight With Venomous Siblings Over The Only Toy.

By Clarity I Don't Mean That We're Always In Kind Of A Simple Area Where Everything Is Clear And Comforting And Understood. Clarity Is Certainly A Way Toward Disorientation Because If You Don't Start Out - If The Reader Isn't Grounded, If The Reader Is Disoriented In The Beginning Of The Poem, Then The Reader Can't Be Led Astray Or Disoriented Later.