I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant:that Scotland has so few trees.

When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.

the translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and has to invent a way down from it in his own language.

After Birth is a fast-talking, opinionated, moody, funny, and slightly desperate account of the attempt to recover from having a baby. It is a romp through dangerous waters, in which passages of hilarity are shadowed by the dark nights of earliest motherhood, those months so tremulous with both new love and the despairing loss of one's identity-to read it is an absorbing, entertaining, and thought-provoking experience.

But it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it.