Poetry Is Language In Orbit.

It Has As Much To Do With The Energy Released By Linguistic Fission And Fusion, With The Buoyancy Generated By Cadence And Tone And Rhyme And Stanza, As It Has To Do With The Poem's Concerns Or The Poet's Truthfulness.

One Of The Very First Poems I Wrote Was Docker That Fist Would Drop A Hammer On A Catholic And One Of The Sturdiest Was Requiem For The Croppies, Written 50 Years After 1916 [the Year Of The Easter Rising]. Being Responsible And What It Means, What It Demands, Have Indeed Preoccupied Me Maybe Too Much. But This Is It, This Is The Thing, This Is What You're Up Against.

Even Though Helen Vendler Wasn't On The Harvard Faculty When I Came First In 1979, She Was A Guardian Spirit; Robert Fitzgerald Gave Me The Use Of His Study In Pusey Library. Monroe And Brenda Engel Kept Open House, Bob And Jana Kiely Made Me At Home In Adams House. Then, Too, In 1979, Frank Bidart, Whom Id Met In Dublin After The Death Of Robert Lowell He Was Over Seeing Caroline Blackwood Frank Brought Me Into His Circle Of Friends, Including Robert Pinsky And Alan Williamson.

The Thing About Writing Is That If You Have The Impulse, You Will Find The Time.

When I Was Teaching, I Gave A Lot Of My Mind And Anxiety To It. There Was Always Something Clenched And Anxious In Me Until The Classes Were Over.