It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.

I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which the more said the better.

You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.

And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didnt.

I graduated in 1952 and went to Europe, with Niki and our first child Laura, who was then a year old.

Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.