The Details Of The World

There's Something Immediate About The Experience Of Reading A Poem - Whether It's The Music Or Some Other Element Of It - That Just Seems To Access Another Part Of The Brain. You Know, Charles Olson Talks About This Transfer Of Energy That Happens Between The Writer And The Reader Of The Poem. I Guess There's Something Essential To Me About Acknowledging Upfront The Immensity Of It - The Difficulty Of It - And Even Allowing That To Be The Subject.

But I Remember Being Told That The Truth Does Not Depend On Being Believed.

I Understood That 'the Yellow Birds' Would Be A Peculiar Representation Of The Experience Of Being At War. I Intended It To Be So.

I Wanted Something That I Could Look Back On And Say, Yes, You Were Fighting Too, You Burned To Be Alive, And Whatever Failure Or Accident Of Nature Caused You To Be Killed Could Be Explained By Something Other Than The Fact That I'd Missed Your Giving Up.

There's Something Immediate About The Experience Of Reading A Poem. It Makes Sense In My Own Mind, But I'm Trying To Figure Out A Way To Articulate It... It's Like Looking At A Painting: You're Able To Take In The Totality Of The Work All At Once, And So Processing Whatever Information That Painting Is Giving You Is Almost Secondary To Simply Apprehending What's In Front Of You.