What Makes The Engine Go? Desire, Desire,

Poetry Today Is Easier To Write But Harder To Remember.

When You Look Back On A Lifetime And Think Of What Has Been Given To The World By Your Presence, Your Fugitive Presence, Inevitably You Think Of Your Art, Whatever It May Be, As The Gift You Have Made To The World In Acknowledgment Of The Gift You Have Been Given, Which Is The Life Itself... That Work Is Not An Expression Of The Desire For Praise Or Recognition, Or Prizes, But The Deepest Manifestation Of Your Gratitiude For The Gift Of Life.

I Refuse To Turn To Theology To Justify The Life Or Redeem It. There Is A Question Always Of The Connection To The Eternal. I Say To Myself Above All, Keep Alive Your Conviction That There Are Sacred Elements In The Life In The Practice Of The Life That Must Be Respected. But The Conviction In The Existence Of The Sacred Does Not Necessarily Imply That You Need To Believe In A Creator, Because We Are The Ones That Made The Sacred.

Writer's Block Is A Natural Affliction. Writers Who Have Never Experienced It Have Something Wrong With Them. It Means There Isn't Enough Friction-that They Aren't Making Enough Of An Effort To Reconcile The Contradictions Of Life. All You Get Is Sweet Monotonous Flow. Writer's Block Is Nothing To Commit Suicide Over. It Simply Indicates Some Imbalance Between Your Experience And Your Art, And I Think That's Constructive.

Some Poems Present Themselves As Cliffs That Need To Be Climbed. Others Are So Defensive That When You Approach Their Enclosure You Half Expect To Be Met By A Snarling Dog At The Gate. Still Others Want To Smother You With Their Sticky Charms.