But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm.

And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.

The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

In high school I was leafing through an anthology that our teachers had given up and I found a poem, I go, "That's so strange. This poem looks so much like my grandfather's poem."

Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency

There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.

I think that's a connection that you can only hope for. It's not something that you can make because it needs someone else.