Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

But maybe it's up the hills or under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever you find, is only part of the missing, and writing is the way the poet finds out what it is he found.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still writing those doubtful poems where too much emotion clashed with too many words.

All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.

Writing is like this -- you dredge for the poem's meaning the way police dredge for a body. They think it is down there under the black water, they work the grappling hooks back and forth.

When your first marriage goes into tragedy, you become very battle-scarred... I even thought of suicide. Luckily, I had known some happy marriages.