Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.

We are authors, all of us, concerned with beginning, with making, with sources and substance.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.