Poet

When I'm thinking of a poem, as I am now, everything else is obliterated, even my thinking.

It's like I'm all alone in a theatre, watching a movie I'm making all by myself.

When I think the movie's over, it's just begun, but at the very beginning it's already coming to the end.

A poem has to do more than look good, a poem has to sound good to what it's trying to say; a poem has to sound good enough to the silence it comes from for the silence to permit the poem to exist.

A poet listens alone for the poem that has a life of its own and is often happy to sit alone without hearing a thing. The anxiety between the poet and the poem is sometimes unbearable, and though the poem is the cause of the anxiousness it's never the poem's fault.

When a poet's listening, he's singing even when no one's listening. And I suppose the poet thinks that's some sort of salvation.