Writing Is An Incessant Process

There Isn't A River Or Creek In The Country - Or There Are Very Few - That Doesn't Have Some Small Group Of People Working On A Restoration Or Creek Cleanup Project. Let Me Give You One Example That's A Great Metaphor: In Washington, D.c., There Is A Group Called The Anacostia Watershed Society. Two Rivers Converge And Define Washington - One Which Everybody Knows About, The Potomac, And The Anacostia, Which They Don't. The Anacostia Is One Of The Most Polluted Urban Rivers In The Country.

When I Began Writing Poems, It Was In The Late 60s And Early 70s When The Literary And Cultural Atmosphere Was Very Much Affected By What Was Going On In The World, Which Was, In Succession, The Civil Rights Movement, The Antiwar Movement, And The Women's Movement In The 60s, 70s, And Into The Early 80s. And All Of Those Things Affected Me And Affected My Thinking, Particularly The Vietnam War.

In California In The Early Spring, There Are Pale Yellow Mornings, When The Mist Burns Slowly Into Day, The Air Stings Like Autumn, Clarifies Like Pain - Well, I Have Dreamed This Coast Myself.

A Movement Got Started For Common Schools, And By The End Of The 19th Century, 91 Percent Of Americans Could Read And Write.

The Professionalization Of Poetry, Or The Balkanization, Has Come Out Of The Fact That When You Apply To Most Creative Writing Programs, You Have To Choose Your Genre.