When I took my first poetry class, I felt that I could understand the relationships between words and the formal qualities of language in a way I would never understand music.
Garth GreenwellI guess I've done a lot of different kinds of performing at various times - opera singing, poetry reading, not least high school teaching - and I do enjoy it, at least sometimes. But I find it incredibly anxiety-producing and exhausting. Privacy is more congenial, and I go a little crazy if I can't spend a big chunk of every day, or almost every day, alone. Certainly I have to be alone to write.
Garth GreenwellI think it's harder to avoid reflection on those larger patterns of history or society when they so insistently call into question your right to exist.
Garth Greenwell