We Don't Know Our Own Story.

I Am Talking About Poetry. It's Like That Line From [john] Yeats: I Go Back To "where All The Ladders Start/ In The Foul Rag And Bone Shop Of The Heart."

After Pope, In The Beginning Of Romanticism, People Developed The Idea That Imagination Rather Than Reason Was A Special Form Of Knowledge And Its Best Expression Is Through Poetry. Therefore, Poetry Should Not Try To Do The Stuff That Mere Prose Does: Convey Information Or Make Arguments About Ideas.

Reading Is A Gymnasium For The Imagination Where People Can Work Out, Get Ready For The Shocks Of Existence. [...] For Me, The Intimate Teachers Have Not Only Taught Me How To Make Things, They Have Represented Some Qualities Of Mind And Mindfulness That I Would Like To Have.

As Poet Laureate, I Was Asked To Be A Spokesman For Literature. Then What I Decided Is I Am A Spokesman For This Other Imagination Of Community - Not The One Showing Up In The Market. Nobody Was Tending To The Way We're Imaginatively Connected To Each Other.

A Word Is Elegy To What It Signifies.