Tonight I Feel The Stars Are Out

I Excavate History. I Look At Lives Buried Under Too Much Silence. Periods Of Time, Like Slavery, Have To Be Revisited, Reimagined, So We Can Move Through Them.

My Great-grandfather Melvin Had Been A Carpenter - So Was My Father - And They Taught Me The Value Of Tools: Saws, Hammers, Chisels, Files And Rulers. It All Dealt With Conciseness And Precision. It Eliminated Guesswork. One Has To Know His Tools, So He Doesn't Work Against Himself.

Poetry Is A Process Of Getting Back To The Unconscious. Hence, I Am Always Writing-even When I'm Not Facing The White Space. I Feel Writers Are Like Reservoirs Of Images. We Take In What Is Around Us.

Students Often Have Such A Lofty Idea Of What A Poem Is, And I Want Them To Realize That Their Own Lives Are Where The Poetry Comes From. The Most Important Things Are To Respect The Language; To Know The Classical Rules, Even If Only To Break Them; And To Be Prepared To Edit, To Revise, To Shape.

I’ve Been Here Before, Dreaming Myself Backwards, Among Grappling Hooks Of Light. True To The Seasons, I’ve Lived Every Word Spoken. Did I Walk Into Someone’s Nightmare?