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.

I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always been important in terms of human concerns.

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.

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

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.

I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.