When I Was In College,

My First Book Was Published When I Was Thirty-two, So I Think It Was Basically Finished When I Was Thirty Or Thirty-one. And So Then You Think, "well, What Have You Failed To Do?" And My Answer To Myself Was Almost Everything.

Such Tenderness, Those Afternoons And Evenings, Saying Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry.

It Seems Like Every Ten Years There's A Book That Says That Poetry Used To Be Popular, And Now It's Not, But We Really Have No Way Of Knowing, In Terms Of Relative Size Of Audience And Other Things, Exactly Who Readers Were.

Poetry Had In The Hands Of Various People Become A Place For Inconvenient Knowledge Insofar As It Was A Place For Knowledge At All. But It Was A Place Where You Could Talk About Other Kinds Of Experience Than The Official Version.

Haiku Is An Art That Seems Dedicated To Making People Pay Attention To The Preciousness And Particularity Of Every Moment Of Existence. I Think That Poetry Can Do That.