To Be In Love Is

I Am A Writer Perhaps Because I Am Not A Talker. It Has Always Been Hard For Me To Say Exactly What I Mean In Speech But If I Have Written A Clumsiness, I May Erase It.

The Forties And Fifties Were Years Of High Poet-incense; The Language-flowers Were Thickly Sweet. Those Flowers Whined And Begged White Folks To Pick Them, To Find Them Lovable. Then The '60s: Independent Fire!

A Poem Doesn't Do Everything For You. You Are Supposed To Go On With Your Thinking. You Are Supposed To Enrich The Other Person's Poem With Your Extensions, Your Uniquely Personal Understandings, Thus Making The Poem Serve You.

To Be In Love Is To Touch Things With A Lighter Hand. In Yourself You Stretch, You Are Well.

A Writer Should Get As Much Education As Possible, But Just Going To School Is Not Enough; If It Were, All Owners Of Doctorates Would Be Inspired Writers.