But the poetry side is what appeals more to me today. Metaphor, just absurd linkages and coming up with categories, labeling, taxonomy, and I'd say that I do have some tools left. There are days I can't make a sentence out of anything, and anything I make looks clunky to me. But I still have a general grasp of the cliché, of the generic sentence. And if I didn't have that, I'd be a blob of putty on the floor.
Richard MeltzerThe first five years as a writer, I didn't know how to write at all. I couldn't write my way out of a white paper bag. And yet, I did some remarkable things. And later on, there were periods where I got this mission to find an articulate voice with rewrites and all. There were periods where I was as dense as Faulkner.
Richard MeltzerOne of the things about me is that I actually had marginally middle-class living from writing. For years and years, I actually wrote so much through the '70s and '80s that I made a living. And very rarely have I had to take another job. And now it's impossible for anybody coming up to make such a living. They've pissed in the temple, you know?
Richard MeltzerI mean, what's thematic? How to put it? Going back to, like, 1980, when I started writing poetry. Language itself became an issue. I'd even think about font as an aspect of text, you know, how something looks on a page. A lot of this is the product of a very solitary existence, it's like, language, I mean, you know. A lot of time spent alone in the creation of all of this stuff.
Richard Meltzer