I was able to read poets that were - allowed me to be humorous without being silly.

I was an only child, a very late child, born to parents who were both 39 at the time, which was very late back then. That kind of confirmed my sense of being the center of the universe, which I guess every child feels - children and poets both tend to feel.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.

I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.

You'll find i-poetry, you'll find that you can download poetry, that you can stuff your i-pod with recorded poetry. So just to answer the question that way, I think that poetry is gonna catch up with that technology quite soon.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.